Your Google headline is missing or the wrong length

Applies to

every page

Typical severity

low

Effect on conversions

medium

Effort to fix

Quick to fix

What to look for

Missing title, or under 10 or over 70 characters.

Why it matters

The page title is the clickable headline in Google search results. It is also the label on the browser tab and the default name when someone bookmarks or shares the page. For many people it is their first impression of your business.

A missing title means search engines and browsers fall back to the web address or guess from the page. A very short title, such as Home, says nothing. A very long one gets cut off in search results, often losing the part that matters.

What good looks like

The page has a title tag between 10 and 70 characters long, after trimming spaces. Under 10 characters is too short to describe the page. Over 70 is likely to be cut off in search results. We recommend 30 to 60 characters: what you offer, then your brand name.

How to check it yourself

1. Hover over the browser tab to see the full title, or view the page source and search for title.
2. Count the characters. Any free online character counter works, or paste it into a spreadsheet and use LEN.
3. Search Google for your business or page and see how the title appears. If it ends in an ellipsis, it's too long.
4. Check every important page, not just the home page. Each page should have its own title.

How to fix it

• Lead with what the page offers, in the words customers search for.
• Add your brand name at the end, after a separator such as a pipe or hyphen.
• Give every page a unique title. Duplicate titles make pages compete with each other.
• In WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace and most builders, the title is set in the page's SEO settings rather than in code.

<!-- Too short -->
<title>Home</title>

<!-- Good: 46 characters -->
<title>Boiler servicing in Leeds | Smith Heating</title>

Common mistakes

• Using the same title on every page.
• Stuffing in a list of keywords.
• Putting the brand name first on every page, so the useful part gets cut off.
• Leaving the default title from the theme or builder, such as My Site or Untitled.

AgoraScan measures this automatically on every page it audits, on desktop and mobile.

Based on

• Google Search Central