Title Tag Checker: Missing, Duplicate and Truncated Titles, Caught Early

A title tag checker reads the <title> element of each page and flags the problems that matter in search: missing titles, duplicates across URLs, titles long enough to be truncated, and pages with more than one <title> in the <head>. Checking one page takes seconds, but across a portfolio of client sites the harder part is noticing when a title that was fine last month has changed.

Titles move more than any other on-page element. A template update, a CMS field left empty or an SEO plugin regenerating titles from a pattern can rewrite what Google shows, and nobody on the client side thinks to mention it.

Five ways a title tag goes wrong

A missing or empty title is the most serious. Google then builds its own title link from the H1, other prominent text or the site name, and you lose control over how the result reads. A common cause is a JavaScript framework that sets the title in the browser while the server response ships an empty <title></title>.

Duplicate titles usually come from templates. Paginated archives such as /blog/page/2/ and /blog/page/3/ inherit the parent title, faceted category pages on ecommerce sites repeat it for every filter combination, and some CMSs fall back to the site name when the title field is blank.

Length is the third. Long titles get cut off in results with an ellipsis. Very short ones, under about 30 characters, usually mean the field was never written and a default filled it.

Multiple <title> elements appear when a theme outputs one and a plugin or a tag manager script adds another. Browsers use the first one in the document, but you shouldn't count on Google choosing the version you intended.

The last problem is Google ignoring the title altogether. Since an update in August 2021, Google replaces title links more often, and its documentation on title links lists the usual reasons: titles that are missing or half-empty, obsolete, inaccurate, stuffed with keywords, or made of boilerplate repeated across many pages. A checker can't predict a rewrite, but a unique title that matches the page's main heading gives Google fewer reasons to make one.

Why 60 characters is only a guide

Google truncates titles by pixel width, not by character count. The desktop limit is commonly measured at around 600 pixels, so a title made of narrow letters can run past 60 characters without clipping, while one full of capitals and wide letters like W and M clips sooner. Sixty characters is the ceiling most SEOs work to because it fits almost every title without checking pixels case by case. When a brand is appended at the end, as in "Running Shoes for Women | Example Store", the brand is what gets cut first, which is usually acceptable.

Checking titles by hand and with a crawler

For one page, typing view-source: before the URL and searching for <title> is enough. From a terminal, curl -s https://example.com/ | grep -i '<title' does the same and shows the server response before any JavaScript runs, which is what exposes the empty-title case above.

For a whole site, use a crawler. Screaming Frog's Page Titles tab has filters for Missing, Duplicate, Over 60 Characters, Below 30 Characters and Multiple, which covers most of this list in a single crawl. Search Console won't help here: the old HTML Improvements report that flagged duplicate and missing titles was retired along with the legacy interface.

Both methods give you a snapshot. Repeating the crawl every week across 15 client sites and comparing the exports is where the process falls apart, the same gap described in monitoring client websites for changes.

Catching the title that changes next month

An audit on day one tells you the titles are fine. The expensive problem shows up on day ninety, when a developer ships a template change that overwrites titles across a whole section. Only comparing one check with the next catches that, which is the core difference explained in SEO monitoring versus an SEO audit.

Deltio reads the title, meta description and H1 of every URL in a site's sitemap on a daily cycle and compares them with the previous check. When a title changes, including when it goes empty, it sends a Slack and email alert for that site with the affected URLs and what changed. After a deploy you can run a manual SEO scan instead of waiting for the next cycle. It's a change monitor rather than a pixel-width calculator, so for a first full title audit a crawler is still quicker. Starter includes a 14-day free trial.