The title tag is the <title> element in your HTML <head>. It becomes the clickable blue link in the search results and the browser tab name. It's the single highest-leverage on-page element for click-through rate.
The pixel budget
Google measures title tags in pixels, not characters:
- Desktop: ~600 pixels
- Mobile: ~920 pixels (counterintuitively wider)
A character is not a fixed-width unit. The letter i is ~4-5px in Arial 20px; W is ~14-15px. Title-case ("How To Configure") consumes more pixels than sentence-case ("How to configure") for the same characters.
The brand-suffix tax
Your brand suffix ( — Featuredsnippet, | Acme) typically eats 100-130px of your 600px desktop budget. That leaves 470-500px for the actual headline. Drop the suffix on informational pages where the headline is doing all the work — Google often appends your site name automatically.
Why Google rewrites titles too
Google rewrites about 60-70% of titles in the SERP, similar to meta descriptions. Common substitutions:
- Your H1
- Your breadcrumb's last segment
- A passage from the page that better matches the query
To survive rewriting, make your H1 as title-friendly as your <title> tag — they're competing candidates for the same SERP slot. See our deep dive on pixel widths and the 60-character myth.