Somebody searches for what you do. Google shows a short list of results: a blue headline and a couple of lines of text for each business. That blue headline is your title tag, a single line of text in your site's code that somebody typed once, often years ago, and that nobody has read since.
That one line does most of the deciding about whether the searcher taps your site or the one below it. Here is what it is, what we found when we checked a dozen local sites, and how to write one that works.
What the title tag is
The title tag is a line of text in the code of every page on your site. Visitors never see it on the page itself. It shows up in the browser tab, and, far more importantly, as the blue headline for your page in a Google result.
Google calls that headline a title link, and its documentation says the headline is generated automatically from what it finds: the title tag first, then the page's main heading and other prominent text. Write a good title tag and Google usually shows it. Leave it broken and Google improvises.
So this is the first thing a searcher reads about your business, and it is plain text somebody types once. There is no cheaper fix on a website.
What we found on 12 roofing homepages
In September we ran the same homepage check on 12 roofing company sites on Oahu, found through a Google Maps search for roofing contractors in Honolulu. The full scan has every number. Here is what the titles alone looked like:
| Check | On the 12 homepages |
|---|---|
| No title tag at all | 1 of 12 |
| Title longer than 60 characters | 9 of the 11 that have one |
| Shortest title | 45 characters |
| Longest title | 333 characters |
The 333 character title was not written that long on purpose. The site's menu text had leaked into it, and nobody noticed, because a title tag is invisible unless you go looking for it.
These happen to be roofing companies, but nothing here is about roofing. The same pattern shows up trade after trade, because the title was typed when the site was built and has not been read since.
Where the 60 character cut comes from
Google does not publish an exact limit. Its documentation says a long headline is shortened to fit the width of the device, which is why the same title can survive on a desktop and get cut on a phone. In practice the cut lands at about 60 characters, so that is the number our checks use.
A 90 character title does not show up as 90 characters. It shows up as the first 60 or so and then trails off mid-sentence with three dots, at whatever point Google stopped. Whatever you put after that point, nobody searching ever sees.
Most visitors to a local business site arrive on a phone, where the screen is narrowest. The cut is not a technicality. It is the difference between a headline that finishes its sentence and one that doesn't.
When Google rewrites your title
The cut is the gentler outcome. When Google decides a title is too long, repeats the same keywords, or carries one identical line on every page of the site, it often ignores the title entirely and writes its own headline from your main heading or other text on the page.
This is common, and it is measurable. A study of 80,959 title tags across 2,370 sites found Google rewrote 61.6 percent of them. Titles over 70 characters were rewritten 99.9 percent of the time. Titles of 51 to 60 characters were rewritten least, at 39 to 42 percent.
So a long title does not just lose its ending. It usually gets replaced with whatever Google picks, and Google's pick may not be the line you would choose to show a customer.
Titles also do not always stay fixed. On a Honolulu office technology dealer whose site we manage, the first full crawl found 45 titles running too long, plus eight titles that had been rewritten in the past and had quietly reverted to the old text. A title is worth rechecking now and then, not fixing once and forgetting.
How to write one
Say what you do, where you do it, and who you are, in that order:
- Start with what the page offers, in the words a customer would type.
- Add the place, if you serve a place.
- End with your business name, if it still fits.
"Roof repair and replacement in Honolulu" is 39 characters, which leaves room for a name after it. Compare that with a title that opens on the business name and a slogan: the part a customer actually searched for is the part that gets cut.
A few more rules worth following. Every page gets its own title, describing that page, so the contact page does not carry the homepage's headline. Resist listing every service you offer in one title; pick what the page is actually about. And skip the decade-old habit of stacking keywords, which is one of the patterns Google's documentation says will get a title rewritten.
Check yours in ten seconds
You do not need to open your site's code. Paste your address into the result preview and it shows your title and description the way Google cuts them, at about 60 and 155 characters, on screen, with no email asked for.
Read the headline it shows you as a customer would. Does it say what you do and where, before the cut? If it ends mid-sentence, or opens on a slogan, the fix is typing one new line in your site editor, usually in a field under the page's settings.
Run your homepage through the result preview tonight and read the blue line as a stranger would. If you would rather have every page's titles, and everything else Google reads, checked at once, the free audit covers the whole site.