Title tags explained: the rules our checker applies

What is a title tag?

A title tag is an HTML element in a page's <head>:

<title>Primary topic – Specific detail | Brand</title>

Browsers show it in the tab and use it as the default bookmark name. Google lists it first among the sources it uses for a result's title link. The others include the main visible heading, <h1> elements, og:title, and the anchor text of links pointing at the page (Google: title links). So your title is a strong suggestion, not a guarantee.

Why it matters for SEO

• It's usually the headline searchers click. When Google uses your <title>, it's the first thing a searcher reads about the page.
• Bad titles get replaced. Google's documentation names the usual reasons it skips a <title>: half-empty, obsolete (last year's date), inaccurate, the same boilerplate on many pages, no clear main title on the page, or a language that doesn't match the content.
• Repetition doesn't help. Google asks for descriptive, concise titles that are distinct per page and warns against keyword stuffing and repeated boilerplate.

How our engine checks title tags

These are the rules as implemented in our engine, verified by running it on edge cases, not a paraphrase of best practice. Three things apply to all four checks:

• We read the HTML as served, before JavaScript runs. A title set by document.title = … after load is invisible to us, so a page whose served <title> is empty fails as missing even if the tab shows a title.
• Whitespace is collapsed before counting. Line breaks and runs of spaces become one space and the ends are trimmed. HTML entities are decoded, so & counts as one character. Characters are counted the way JavaScript counts string length: most emoji count as 2.
• We use the first non-empty title element in the document. That's where we can disagree with your browser. See the next section.

Check 1: onpage-title-missing

Severity: Critical · Runs in: free audit and full crawl
Fails when: no title element in the served HTML has any text after whitespace is trimmed. It's one of two on-page checks marked critical; the other is a missing H1.

Check 2: onpage-title-too-long

Severity: Warning · Runs in: free audit and full crawl
Fails when: the title is longer than 60 characters. Exactly 60 passes. Google doesn't truncate at a character count but at the device width, so 60 is our rule of thumb for a title that is likely to show in full. Put the words that earn the click first.

Check 3: onpage-title-too-short

Severity: Warning · Runs in: free audit and full crawl
Fails when: the title is shorter than 30 characters. Exactly 30 passes. A short title isn't wrong in itself (a brand homepage can be one word), but it often means a template default like "Home" or "Products" was never replaced.

Neither length check applies when the title is missing. They are left out of the findings, the check count and the score, so one problem isn't counted three times.

Check 4: onpage-title-duplicate

Severity: Warning · Runs in: full crawl only
Fails when: two or more crawled pages share the same title, ignoring case and collapsing runs of spaces. Every page in the group fails. The free audit sees a single page, so it can't detect duplicates and the check doesn't appear in a free report.

Where our checker and your browser can disagree

Browsers use the first HTML <title> element in the document, even if it's empty. Our engine takes the first title element that has text. We ran both on the same HTML in headless Chromium:

• <title></title><title>Second title</title>: the browser's title is empty; our checker reports "Second title" and passes the missing check.
• No head title, but an inline SVG icon with a <title> (common for accessible icons, e.g. <svg><title>Close icon</title>…): the browser's title is empty; our checker reports "Close icon" as the page title. The same happens when the head title is blank. A crawl would also group every such page as a duplicate of each other.
• Two non-empty titles: both use the first. Neither our checker nor the browser warns that there are two. Our engine counts them but no check uses the count yet.

The first two are gaps in our checker, documented here rather than left silent. If your report shows a title you don't recognise, that's the likely cause. The snippet below prints both values so you can see which case you're in.

Reproduce what our checker saw

Run this in the browser console on the page in question. It fetches the HTML as served, applies the same rules as checks 1–3, then prints the browser's own title and how many title elements the page has:

const html = await (await fetch(location.href)).text();
const doc = new DOMParser().parseFromString(html, 'text/html');
const t = [...doc.querySelectorAll('title')]
  .map(el => el.textContent.replace(/\s+/g, ' ').trim())
  .find(Boolean) ?? null;
console.log(t === null ? 'MISSING'
  : `${t.length} chars: ${t.length > 60 ? 'TOO LONG' : t.length < 30 ? 'TOO SHORT' : 'ok'}`, t);
console.log('browser title:', JSON.stringify(doc.title),
  '| <title> elements:', doc.querySelectorAll('title').length);

If it prints MISSING but your tab shows a title, a script sets it after load or the page is served from a cache that predates your edit. If the first line and browser title differ, you're in one of the cases above: view the source and search for <title.

How to read your result

• Pass: a title of 30–60 characters was found. That says nothing about whether it's accurate or specific. Read it next to the page's main heading.
• Critical: missing. No title text in the served HTML. Fix this first.
• Warning: too long. Over 60 characters. Move the distinctive words to the front; trim the brand suffix before the topic.
• Warning: too short. Under 30 characters. Check it's not a template default, then add what the page is specifically about.
• Warning: duplicate (full crawl only). Other pages share this title, usually a template that was never customised per page.

How to fix title tag issues (by platform)

Where to set the title on each platform:

• WordPress → (too long: WordPress)
• Shopify → (too long: Shopify)
• Webflow →
• Wix →
• Squarespace →

To see how a draft reads before publishing, type it into our SERP preview. To inspect a live URL's tags, use the meta tag analyzer. Descriptions follow similar rules. See meta descriptions explained.

FAQ