Product Title Length: Shopify vs Google Shopping, and How to Fix It in Bulk

By Mantas Vaitkūnas, Founder, NorlifLinkedIn · 8 min read · Updated September 24, 2026

The Shopify product title character limit is 255, but the Google Shopping title length that actually shows is much shorter: Merchant Center accepts up to 150 characters, and shoppers usually see only the first 70 or so. So the product title length that works everywhere is 50–65 characters, with the brand, the product and its key attribute up front.

Product title length: Shopify limit vs Google Shopping

• Shopify: the product title field takes up to 255 characters and rejects anything longer. The SEO page title you set under Search engine listing is a separate field; Shopify's SEO keywords guide caps it at 70 characters and recommends staying at 60.
• Google Shopping: Google's title attribute spec allows 1 to 150 characters but notes that users usually notice only the first 70 or fewer. Whatever sits after that is effectively invisible.
• So front-load it: brand + product type + the one attribute shoppers filter by (size, color, capacity, model). Specs that don't fit belong in the description and product attributes.

What an overlong title looks like

Here's a real product title from a Shopify store:

SAMSUNG Galaxy S24 Ultra SM-S928B 12/256GB Titanium Gray 6.8" 200MP Dual SIM Factory Unlocked

That's 91 characters. Google Shopping will chop it at 70. On a phone, customers see even less. The model number, the RAM spec and the screen size either get cut off or, worse, push the actual product name out of view.

A cleaner version:

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 256GB Titanium Gray

45 characters. Fits everywhere. Says exactly what the product is. No wasted space on specs that belong in the description.

Most Shopify stores have this problem across hundreds or thousands of products. The titles were imported from suppliers, copied from manufacturers, or just never cleaned up. And the data on what that costs you is pretty clear.

If you'd rather watch the fix than read it, here's a two-minute walkthrough of cleaning up messy imported titles in bulk:

Why the platforms reward short titles

Google Shopping's 70 visible characters are only part of the picture. Amazon went further. In January 2025, they dropped their title limit from 500 characters to 200 and started enforcing it: titles that don't comply get adjusted automatically after 14 days. Their recommendation? 80 characters or fewer for mobile display. And over 70% of Amazon traffic is mobile.

In organic search, Google truncates titles around 50–60 characters on desktop (measured in pixels, roughly 525–535px). On phones, you might get two lines, but the safe zone is still under 60 characters.

A 2025 study of around 30,000 keywords found that Google rewrites 76% of the title tags it encounters. Of the titles Google leaves untouched (the ones it considers good enough), 85% fall in the 30 to 60 character range.

So this goes beyond formatting taste. The platforms are actively selecting for short titles.

What fixing titles actually does to traffic

There are several well-documented case studies on this. They come from feed optimization companies, so treat the exact numbers as best cases. The direction, though, is the same in every one of them.

A fashion brand ran an A/B test where they moved their brand name from the start of product titles to the end. Nothing else changed. The result: 12.5% higher click-through rate and 25% better return on ad spend. Moving the brand freed up the first dozen characters for keywords that matched what people were actually searching.

A larger study by the agency Searchmind showed that adding structured brand and product type information to titles led to a 38.8% CTR increase and a 95.7% jump in conversions. The conversion value went up 139%.

One outdoor gear retailer had products that were getting zero impressions in Google Shopping. After rewriting titles around the keywords customers were actually using instead of manufacturer jargon, some of those products went from nothing to 50+ clicks per day.

One more number: 81% of top-performing Google Shopping advertisers use different titles in their product feeds than on their website. They've figured out that what looks good on a product page doesn't necessarily perform in search.

Five title mistakes you probably have right now

We've looked at thousands of Shopify product feeds, and the same problems come up over and over.

1. Spec dumping

Cramming every technical detail into the title. Model numbers, dimensions, compatibility lists, material codes. That information matters, but it belongs in product attributes and descriptions, not the title. Only about 25% of Google Shopping titles use the full display space effectively. The rest are wasting characters on specs nobody searches for.

2. Keyword stuffing

Repeating the same word multiple times hoping it helps rankings. It doesn't. Amazon now explicitly limits any word to two appearances in a title (and counts plurals as repetitions, so "pan" and "pans" are the same word to their system). Google can penalize or suppress listings with stuffed titles entirely.

3. Wrong word order

Most shoppers scan the first four to six words of a title before deciding to click. If your title starts with the brand name and the shopper doesn't know or care about the brand, you've wasted those words. For established brands, leading with the brand makes sense. For everything else, lead with what the product is.

4. ALL CAPS and special characters

Using caps, exclamation marks, or symbols to grab attention. Both Google and Amazon have editorial rules against this. Amazon's 2025 policy specifically bans characters like !, $, ?, _, {, } and ^ unless they're part of the actual brand name. Titles with "gimmicky" formatting get flagged or rewritten.

5. Supplier copy-paste titles

The biggest one. Importing products from a supplier or manufacturer and never touching the titles. These titles are written for wholesale catalogs, not for consumers searching on Google. They're full of internal codes and formatted for databases, not for people.

What a good title looks like

A well-structured product title follows a simple pattern: Brand + Product Type + Key Differentiator + Variant. Aim for 50–65 characters so it displays fully on every platform.

In each row the all-caps went, redundant specs came out, the most searchable terms moved to the front, and anything that didn't help a shopper understand the product in two seconds got cut.

The manual fix vs. the realistic fix

If your store has 30 products, open each one and rewrite the title. It'll take an afternoon and you'll see results within a few weeks as Google re-indexes the pages.

But catalogs grow. At about 3 minutes per product to open, rewrite and save, the math gets ugly fast:

At 300 products or more, doing it by hand isn't realistic. You'll start strong, get through maybe 40 titles, and then other priorities take over. The rest of your catalog stays broken.

That's why we built Norlif AI Descriptions, Titles. It's a Shopify app that rewrites your product titles in bulk. You select the products (or an entire collection), hit one button, and the AI reads each product's data and writes a clean, keyword-focused title. You review the results before anything goes live.

It handles the problems listed above. It strips out spec clutter, fixes capitalization, reorders words and gets titles under 70 characters so they display in full on Google Shopping, Amazon and mobile search.

Install Norlif AI Descriptions, Titles from the Shopify App Store and run it on a test collection first. You'll see the before/after for every title before you publish anything.

Frequently asked questions

How long can a Shopify product title be?

Up to 255 characters. That is the hard limit on Shopify's product title field, and anything longer is rejected. The separate SEO page title in the Search engine listing section takes up to 70 characters, and Shopify suggests keeping it to 60 so search results don't cut it off.

What is the Google Shopping product title length limit?

Google Merchant Center accepts product titles of 1 to 150 characters, but shoppers usually see only the first 70 or fewer, depending on screen size. Put the brand, the product type and the key attribute (size, color, model) inside those first 70 characters.

What is the ideal product title length for SEO?

Around 50 to 65 characters. That fits inside the roughly 70 characters Google Shopping shows and close to Shopify's recommended 60-character SEO title, and it sits in the 30 to 60 character range where most titles Google leaves unrewritten fall. Lead with what the product is and move specs to the description.

Can I fix product titles in bulk?

Yes. Norlif AI Descriptions, Titles rewrites titles across your whole catalog in one run. Select the products or an entire collection, hit one button, and it writes a clean, keyword-focused title for each. You review the before and after for every title before anything goes live. Fixing 500 titles by hand is roughly 25 hours of work; in bulk it takes a few minutes.

What does it cost?

Norlif AI Descriptions, Titles is free to install with 100 free credits, and each product you optimize uses credits. Extra credits cost $1 per 100, and products that are skipped or fail don't spend anything. Run it on a test collection first and you'll see every before and after before committing.

The short version

Shopify allows 255 characters in a product title, but Google Shopping shows about 70 of its 150. Amazon recommends 80. Shopify's SEO title field is 70, with 60 recommended. Google leaves short titles alone and rewrites long ones. Case studies consistently show double-digit CTR improvements from title cleanup. Most stores have hundreds of titles that were never optimized.

Cleaner titles get seen and clicked more often. For a small catalog, the fix is an afternoon of manual work. For anything bigger, it's a few minutes with a tool like Norlif AI Descriptions, Titles.

Titles aren't the only field imported catalogs leave broken. Read next: how to write meta descriptions in bulk, product descriptions in bulk, how to auto-assign Shopify product categories with AI, and how to generate product images in bulk. Still choosing a tool? See our ranking of the best AI product title generators for Shopify.