Will too long a Title tag hurt me?

[CWebguy]

I have an ecommerce site that is automated, and some of the title tags are a bit long (like all the way across the top bar almost). Might this possibly hurt me in the search rankings (penalized)?

By the way, I know PHP to truncate it if I need to, just wondering if I should or not. Thanks.

Cwebguy

[bill]

Overly long titles tell me that the designer is probably using the CMS default. It looks lazy to me.

Less words will give the keywords more weight.

[StoutFiles]

It defintely won't help you to have them that long.

[rocknbil]

It's my understanding that search engines "read" respective content from left to right, top to bottom, regardless of it's type (title, meta description, actual page content, etc.)

Therefore regardless of the length, it's critical you put your more vital content to the left in a title element or toward the top in terms of content. One search engine may slurp up more, another less . . . so theoretically, it's not so much the length of the titles, it's what you have farthest left.

[Quadrille]

I don't think it will actually do harm, but as others have said, it won't do good, it looks 'spammy' - which may or may not matter depending on your target audience, and it could conceivably raise a flag with SEs, who are adept at spotting potentailly risky behaviour.

If your cms set up does this ... what other sloppy stuff is it doing that may be more serious? I'd review your cms setup, nd if it can't be controlled better, I'd review your cms.

I'm also not sure that PHP truncation can be a complete answer, as it will leave you with fairly nonsensical titles that may leave unhelpful serps. But take a close look at your serps; do rival sites have more inviting titles?

[edited by: Quadrille at 10:36 pm (utc) on Feb. 22, 2009]

[CWebguy]

Ok, I'll go ahead and change it. Thanks.

[nullnill]

I know this is somewhat hijacking and the question is newby but I am new :)

How many words define a long, medium and short title ?
e.g. 5+ long, 3-4 medium, 1-2 short

[CWebguy]

I set mine to eight.

[pageoneresults]

Believe it or not, Google has a 2-22 word suggestion in Google News which is separate from search. I doubt many of us would approach that 22 word limit but you never know.

Page titles in the SERPs will normally truncate at 66/67 characters depending on the word composition at the point of truncation. Yahoo! recommends 67 characters as a limit. < Take that with a grain of salt as they also promote the use of META Keywords heavily in their documentation.

The general thinking is that you focus your title and keep them short. Look at it from a user perspective. How much of the title do they "see". That's the part you focus on. Anything after that is long tail fluff. ;)

Google News Publishers Help
[webmasterworld.com...]

[CWebguy]

I can make a living off of long tail fluff :) Thanks for the info pageone.