Why does Google's SERP page titles truncate after 64 chars?

There's plenty of space left...

[mikomido]

It's very frustration to not see all of the title in the SERPs... they truncate too quickly. 255 chars would be acceptable, but 64 chars is just too little.

[Robert Charlton]

mikimodo - In the days prior to Google, my self-imposed max title length was roughly 68-70 characters, so yes, Google has felt a little constrained for me. Apparently more so for you.

Because Google does index text beyond the 64 characters, you might want to think of the short display limit as a very strong hint from Google that you ought to focus your titles.

...255 chars would be acceptable...

Again, IMO, that's much too long. Most meta descriptions are shorter than that. Less is more. Focus.

Two discussions (among others) you ought to look at...

Title Tags: A badly written title will sink your site
How to sabotage your web site without even knowing it
[webmasterworld.com...]

Building the Perfect Page - Part II - The Basics
Developing an effective <title> element.
[webmasterworld.com...]

[jomaxx]

Boy, you're really full of complaints. Anyway, why do they do it? Because they had to pick SOME number and that's the number.

I agree with Robert that 255 characters would be way too long. Multi-line links are not very readable or user-friendly.

[CWebguy]

It's very frustration to not see all of the title in the SERPs... they truncate too quickly. 255 chars would be acceptable, but 64 chars is just too little.

Why does this matter?

[koan]

There's plenty of space left...

Think outside your monitor.

[vincevincevince]

If you can't say it in 64 characters then it's probably not worth saying at all.

[mikomido]

Are you people serious? The very least should be 128 characters.

I frequently get frustrated from not being able to read the full title. And Google doesn't ignore > 64 chars when it indexes... it just doesn't show it in the SERPs.

[vincevincevince]

I presume you've never used a WAP browser? 64 characters is already wrapped over a few lines - you'd not expect your title to overflow my screen would you?

[Drag_Racer]

it has nothing to do with wap, it has to do with data storage. When Google was built, this was the size they chose for their data base. They have a ton of data so to optimize makes sense. As time went on they have not upgraded this size yet.

[vincevincevince]

I took a look at my bookshelf. Not a single book's spine title was over 64 characters in length. I can only imagine that the original poster wants to keyword-stuff the title, or force it to wrap and make the 'click-zone' larger.

[followgreg]

If one can't summarize his page title in 64 characters the likelyhood of stupity is equal to the likelyhood of spam.

Title spam usually also goes with meta description spam....those that take a meta description for a list of keywords are annoying in the SERP's I find...

I really never understood why Google doesn't filter that or at least I see quite a few examples of the above that keep Google trust, just annoying given the probability of manipulation atemtp.

[Kufu]

The character limit for the title in Google SERPs is 70 not 64. The only time it gets truncated down to 64 is when you go over the 70 limit. If you stay at or below 70, you should see your full title in the SERPs.

[BigDave]

Set your screen resolution to the same as my mom uses, then see if you consider it too short.

<added>And the answer to your question is, they did it because that is what they decided to do, and it's their search engine.

I can't think of any place that displays a page title that will show that many characters. Not in bookmarks/favorites, not in tabs, and not even in the title bar at the top of my browser.</added>

[edited by: BigDave at 5:35 pm (utc) on Sep. 6, 2007]