Title tag missing or wrong length

On every live page the length of <title> is measured in characters. The finding is raised when the element is missing, empty, or the length falls outside 10 to 60 characters. Both bounds live in config/seo.json under seo.SEO-01 as min_length: 10 and max_length: 60, and both are marked "_status": "PROPOSAL". That is our proposal, not a number from Google.

What the check does not do:

• It does not judge the content of the title. “aaaaaaaaaaaa” is twelve characters and passes.
• It does not check for duplicates across the site: that is SEO-03 (and STR-03 in the core set).
• It does not measure pixel width. Google truncates titles by width, not by character count, so a title in capitals gets cut sooner than our threshold suggests.
• It does not check whether the title matches the page content.

The finding is page-level; severity is warning.

Let us split this, because without splitting it the finding would sound stronger than it is entitled to.

For classic search the title has documented significance. Google builds the result link from it (together with the page content) and documents that itself. It is the first thing a person sees in a result and it decides whether they click.

For visibility in AI answers we have no documented effect, hence the “effect not demonstrated” class. No operator of a language model declares how it treats titles, and we know of no measurement comparing a site with good titles against an otherwise identical one without them.

And about that threshold, because it is weaker than it looks: Google publishes no recommended title length. The 10–60 range is a convention from practice (past it, the title gets truncated in results) and our configuration marks it as a proposal pending revision. Google itself says only that a title should be descriptive and concise, without a number.

The practical conclusion: fix a missing title, that is a real defect. On length, go by whether the title makes sense rather than by our number, and if the finding strikes you as unfair on a well-written title, you are probably right.

A good title names the specific page and makes sense out of context. A formula that works almost everywhere:

<title>Heat pump servicing within 48 hours | Our Company</title>

• Specifics first, brand after. Both the result and the browser tab show the beginning; the company name in front takes the most valuable space and is identical on every page.
• One title per page and nowhere else the same. Duplication is a more serious defect than length: that is SEO-03.
• Do not list keywords. “Heat pumps, pumps, pump servicing, London” is a low-quality signal, not optimisation.
• Generate it from the template from the same source as <h1>, rather than writing it by hand on a thousand pages.

And expect that Google may rewrite the title in the result: its own documentation says the link may be taken from the page content when your title does not suit the query. It is not an error and cannot be turned off; it can only be pre-empted by making the title describe what is actually on the page.