Truncation

What Does Truncation Mean?

If your most important message is at the end of the title tag, no one on mobile may ever see it. Truncation cuts text ruthlessly — which is why keywords and core messages always belong at the beginning. Check in Google Search Console how often your titles are being truncated and adjust overly long phrasings accordingly.

Truncation is the shortening of meta titles and meta descriptions in Google search results when they exceed the available display space. A title tag with 80 characters is automatically shortened by Google and ended with ”…”. This happens frequently on mobile devices (less space) and in desktop results with many additional elements. Truncation reduces the visibility of the full message and can lower CTR.

The mechanism is straightforward: Google measures the character length and pixel width of titles and descriptions. On desktop, titles are approximately 70–75 characters; on mobile, 50–60 characters. Descriptions on desktop run about 155–160 characters; on mobile, 120–125. When text is longer, it gets truncated. Important: character count is not absolutely decisive — it is the pixel width. Wide letters (W, M) count more than narrow ones (i, l).

In practice, keep title tags and descriptions concise: put the most important information first, do not place critical keywords at the end. A title like “Buy Solar Panels | Calculate Costs | Affordable Systems – [Company]” has redundancies and will likely be truncated — better: “Solar Panels: Affordable Systems & Cost Calculator.” In Search Console testing, you can see how often titles are being cut. If it is frequent, shorten them. A readable truncated version beats a long title that always gets cut off.