Stackbench Title tag length: measure pixels, not characters
The advice to “keep titles under 60 characters” is a rough translation of a rule that is not written in characters. Search results clip the title at a rendered pixel width, and two titles with the same character count can differ by nearly double in width.
The number that matters
On desktop the title slot is roughly 600 pixels wide, and on mobile it is narrower still — often around 480 pixels for a single line, with a second line appearing when there is room. Where exactly the cut lands depends on the font the results page renders and on the device, so treat those figures as working targets rather than guarantees.
Width, not count, decides what a visitor sees. Two concrete examples at the same length:
iPhone 15 Pro Max case with magnetic mount and kickstand— 58 characters, wide glyphs throughout.iPhone 11 lil case w/ mtl mnt & kickstand— 41 characters, but narrow ones.
The first gets clipped; the second probably does not. Character counters cannot tell you this, which is why a length bar alone is a weak guardrail.
Latin scripts and CJK differ
A full-width Chinese character is about as wide as two Latin ones, so the same 600-pixel budget fits roughly 26–30 汉字, not 60. Writing a 60-character Chinese title guarantees truncation. Plan for about 28 characters, and put the term you cannot afford to lose first.
Truncation is not the bigger risk
Since 2021 Google has openly rewritten result titles — drawing on heading text, link anchors and
page content — in a large share of cases. A long or unrepresentative <title> makes a rewrite more
likely, so the practical defences are:
- Front-load the term that must survive.
- Make the
<title>match the page’s H1 in wording, so a rewrite lands on the same phrase. - Keep the site name at the end, separated by
|or-, and keep it short.
Meta description length
Descriptions are the other half of the snippet, and they behave differently: Google may replace your description with a passage from the page that better matches the query, no matter how well you length-managed it. The 150–160 character target for desktop is a display convention, not a limit, and mobile cuts earlier. Write it as a one-sentence answer plus one reason to click.
How to check without guessing
The cheapest reliable method is to measure the string with the same API the browser uses for text layout, which is what the meta tag generator does: it renders a desktop and a mobile preview, and reports the width of your title so you can see the clip point before the page is live.
For Open Graph fields, platforms truncate around 60–70 characters of og:title and expect
og:image near 1200×630 — a shared post uses those tags, not your <title>.