Blog Title Length: Why the Character Count Matters

A blog title has no hard limit, but Google cuts long ones to fit the screen, and they often become your URL. Why length matters and how to check it.

As far as Google is concerned, you can make a blog title as long as you like: it says there is no limit on how long a <title> element can be. The trouble is what happens to that title after you publish. The number of characters still matters because the same title gets reused in places with limited room. In search results the title is shortened to fit the screen. Your blogging platform usually turns it into the URL. And Google may show different text if the title is long, vague or repetitive.

Checking a title right now? Paste it into Clear Count. It counts characters as you type, in your browser, and nothing is uploaded.

The practical rule: put the words that say what the post is about at the start, cut words that add nothing, and check the length before you publish. The rest of this post explains where the title ends up, what Google's own documentation says, and how to check a title in a few seconds.

Where One Blog Title Ends Up

When you type a title into a blog editor, you are usually writing several things at once. Each one has its own constraint:

Where it appears	What limits it
Search result title link	No limit on the `<title>` element, but Google truncates the title link "as needed, typically to fit the device width"
Main heading on the page (H1)	No limit, but long headings wrap across several lines, especially on phones
URL slug	In WordPress the slug is filled in automatically from the title, so a long title gives a long URL unless you edit it
`og:title` tag	Google lists `og:title` among the sources it can use for the title link

Google does not publish a character number for title links. The cut is made to fit the device width, so it depends on how wide the letters are, not only how many there are. Two titles with the same number of characters can be cut at different points. Our meta title character limit guide explains that pixel-width effect in detail.

Why the Number of Characters Matters

The End of a Long Title Can Be Cut

If a title is wider than the space available, the end is cut off. Words that come last are the ones that disappear. A title like "Everything You Need to Know Before You Start: Our Complete Guide to Sourdough Starter" puts the topic at the very end, where it is most likely to be cut. "Sourdough Starter: A Complete Beginner's Guide" says the same thing with the topic first.

Google May Write Its Own Title Link

Google's documentation lists the sources it uses to determine title links automatically. They include the <title> element, the main visual title on the page, heading elements such as <h1>, the og:title meta tag, anchor text, and text in links that point to the page. When a title has problems, Google says it "may try to generate an improved title link from anchors, on-page text, or other sources."

The problems it names include titles that don't accurately describe the page, repeated boilerplate across many pages, and pages with more than one large, prominent heading. It also advises against "unnecessarily long or verbose text" and keyword repetition, noting that "there's no reason to have the same words or phrases appear multiple times." Google doesn't promise to keep any title, but every problem on its list is one a short, specific title avoids. Meta descriptions get rewritten too, for reasons explained in why Google rewrites meta descriptions.

The Title Often Becomes the URL

WordPress's documentation says the slug is "automatically pre-populated as a URL-friendly version of your post/page title," and that you can change it. A long title gives you a long URL unless you shorten the slug yourself. Google recommends readable words in URLs rather than long ID numbers, but readable doesn't have to mean long. Our post on URL slug length covers which words are safe to cut.

Keep the Title and the H1 in Step

Google lists both the visible main title and <h1> elements as sources for title links, and suggests making the main title clear, for example by putting it in the first visible <h1> on the page. If your blog title is the H1 and a shorter version is the <title>, keep them close in meaning so they don't compete. The H1 character limit guide covers the heading side of this.

Blog Title, SEO Title and H1: Same Text or Not?

Some setups let you enter a separate "SEO title" next to the post title. If yours does, one way to split the work is:

H1 (the post title readers see): can be a little longer and more natural, because it is not cut off on the page.
SEO title (the <title> element): the same topic, with the main phrase first and filler words removed.
Slug: the main phrase only, edited by hand rather than generated from a long title.

If your platform uses one title for everything, write that one title for the most limited place: the search result.

How to Check a Title's Length

Counting by eye doesn't work well, because spaces and punctuation count too. A quick way is to paste the title into Clear Count. The Chars number updates as you type and includes spaces. Chars — No Spaces shows the same text with all whitespace removed. You can paste a few versions, delete all but one, and compare. The text stays in your browser: the page doesn't send what you type anywhere.

Two things change the number. Spaces count in title length; characters with vs. without spaces explains why counters disagree about them. And Clear Count reports the length the way JavaScript measures text, so some emoji count as two characters. Different tools count emoji differently, as this character counter breakdown shows.

A Checklist Before You Publish

Main phrase first. Make sure the words someone would search for are in the first part of the title.
One idea per title. Cut a second clause if it only repeats the first.
No repeated keywords. Say the phrase once.
Site name once, at the start or end, separated by a delimiter, if you include it at all, as Google suggests.
Title and H1 agree. They can differ in length, not in topic.
Edit the slug. Don't accept a slug generated from a long title.
Check the count. Paste the final title into Clear Count, then compare it with the guidance in our on-page SEO character limits cheat sheet.

Before You Hit Publish

A blog title is not rejected for being long. It gets cut off, sometimes replaced, and reused in your URL. Write the important part first, keep the rest short, and paste the final version into Clear Count before you publish.

Sources: Google Search Central, "Influencing your title links in search results" (last updated 2025-12-10) and "URL structure best practices" (last updated 2026-10-21); WordPress.org documentation, "Page/Post Settings sidebar" (last updated October 24, 2024).

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