Here is a simple chart to help you make your page titles and descriptions.
[NOTE:]
This chart has the potential to get dated. I'm guessing that if you fall in the safe zone with this chart you'll be good to go but search engines have changed their max characters and meta before. If you find that this information is getting outdated here please let me know so I can make sure everyone is getting it straight. Thanks!
Search Engine |
Max No. of characters in Title |
Max No. of chars in
Description |
Search Engine takes its description info from the page's Meta Data |
AltaVista |
70 |
150 |
Y |
AOL |
70 |
249 |
N |
Direct Hit |
130 |
250 |
Y |
Excite |
80 |
200 |
Y |
Google |
70 |
170 |
N |
Inktomi |
80 |
200 |
Y |
LookSmart |
55 |
no limit |
N |
Lycos / FAST |
90 |
200 |
N |
Northern Light |
70 |
150 - 200 |
N |
Open Directory |
100 |
25 - 30 words |
N |
Web Crawler |
80 |
200 |
Y |
Yahoo |
60 |
200 / 25 words |
Y |
|
Contact Info
If you look at the chart you'll see the safe zone is at 70 characters for the title and 150 for the description.
Looking at the meta data part it seems safe to say that the title is more important than the description of your page. However, enough search engines use this to warrant using it yourself! :)
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