Shopify Meta Description Length and Page Title Limits

By Mantas Vaitkūnas, Founder, NorlifLinkedIn · 5 min read · October 13, 2026

The Shopify meta description limit is 320 characters and the page title limit is 70. Those are the numbers the admin accepts. Google shows fewer of both, so the length to write for is shorter: 50 to 60 characters for the page title and 140 to 160 for the meta description.

Below: where the numbers come from, where to edit each field, and how to find the products in your catalog that are over.

Why Shopify gives two numbers for the meta description

Shopify's own help pages disagree with each other. The page on editing a product's search engine listing says to enter no more than 320 characters. The page on SEO keywords says "it's recommended that 160 characters is used in the description."

Both are right about different things. 320 is how much the field holds. 160 is roughly how much a search result shows. The larger number matches a few months in 2017 and 2018 when Google showed snippets of about that length, then went back to short ones. The field is still that size.

So a 300-character meta description saves without any warning, and then loses its second half in the search result.

What Google actually shows

Google doesn't publish a character limit for either field. Its documentation says "there's no limit on how long a meta description can be" and that the snippet "is truncated in Google Search results as needed, typically to fit the device width." It says the same about titles.

That is why every guide quotes a slightly different number. The cut depends on the screen and on how wide the letters are. A title full of capital Ws runs out of room sooner than one full of lowercase i's. In practice a page title under 60 characters and a meta description under 160 usually survive on a desktop screen, and a phone usually shows less of the description. Put the product name and the main reason to click in the first 120 characters, so the part that matters is there on both.

Two more things from Google's documentation are worth knowing:

• Google may not use your meta description. Snippets are "primarily created from the page content itself." The tag is used when Google thinks it describes the page better than the on-page text does.
• Google may rewrite your title. If it decides the title doesn't show what the page is about, it builds a new one from headings, link text and other sources.

Neither is a reason to skip the fields. A written meta description is what Google falls back on when it has nothing better, and on a product page the alternative is often your navigation menu and a price.

Where to edit them in Shopify

1. In the Shopify admin, go to Products and open a product.
2. Scroll to Search engine listing and click the pencil icon.
3. Fill in Page title and Meta description. Change the URL handle only if you have to.
4. Click Save.

If you never touch this section, the listing preview is made from the product title, the product URL and the first part of the product description. That works when the description opens with a clear sentence about the product. It works badly when the description opens with a shipping notice, a size chart or a line of supplier boilerplate, because that becomes your search snippet.

The URL handle takes letters, numbers and hyphens, with no spaces. Shopify warns that editing it too often can stop the product from showing in search results. Set it once.

The product title is a different field

The product title is what shoppers see on the product page, and it can be up to 255 characters. The page title is what goes in the browser tab and the search result, and it stops at 70. If you leave the page title empty, the theme builds it from the product title and your shop name.

That is where long supplier titles cause trouble. A 140-character product title with a shop name on the end is a page title Google will cut or rewrite. You can fix it in either place: shorten the product title, or write a separate page title of 60 characters and leave the long one on the page. The first is usually better, because the same title also feeds Google Shopping, which shows about the first 70 characters. That is the "under 70" in the table. Product title length for Google Shopping covers that side.

How to find the products that are over

The admin doesn't list products by title or description length, so the quickest check is a spreadsheet.

1. Go to Products, click Export and export all products as a CSV file.
2. Open the file. The columns you need are SEO title and SEO description.
3. Add a column next to each with a length formula. If SEO title is in column X, that is =LEN(X2).
4. Filter for SEO titles over 60, SEO descriptions over 160, and both fields where the length is 0.

The zeros matter as much as the long ones. An empty SEO description means the snippet comes from the start of the product description, whatever that happens to be.

You can fix the rows in the spreadsheet and import the file back with the option to overwrite existing products. Before you do, save an untouched copy of the export. Then delete the columns you didn't change, except URL handle and Title, which Shopify needs to match each row to a product. A column that isn't in the file is left alone. A blank cell in a column that is in the file overwrites the value in your store with nothing.

This is fine for fifty products. For two thousand it is two thousand short pieces of writing, each of which has to stay under a limit and not repeat the one before it.

The faster route

We make Norlif AI Descriptions, Titles, a Shopify app that writes these fields in bulk. It aims for titles of 50 to 65 characters and meta descriptions of 140 to 160, and cuts a longer meta description back to the last full sentence that fits in 160. Every change is listed next to the original, and one click puts the old text back.

It isn't the only way to do this. Our comparison of AI meta description generators for Shopify covers six others, including the free ones.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Shopify meta description character limit?

Shopify accepts up to 320 characters. Write 140 to 160, because Google cuts longer snippets to fit the screen.

What is the Shopify page title character limit?

You can enter up to 70 characters in the Page title field of the Search engine listing section. Shopify suggests keeping it to 60 or fewer so search results don't shorten it.

Is there a Shopify product description character limit?

Shopify's help pages don't state a limit for the product description. Its first sentence matters most, because it becomes the search snippet when the meta description is empty.

Does a meta description that is too long hurt SEO?

Not directly. Google says there is no limit on how long a meta description can be, and it doesn't rank pages on the tag. The cost is the cut: whatever sits past the visible part of the snippet, often the call to action, is never shown.

What is the Shopify product title character limit?

A product title can be up to 255 characters. A CSV import rejects longer ones with the error "Title is too long (maximum is 255 characters)". The Page title in the Search engine listing is a separate field with its own 70-character limit.

Limits are the easy part. Read next: how to write meta descriptions in bulk and how to write product descriptions in bulk.