Title Tag Checker: Missing, Duplicate and Truncated Titles, Caught Early
A title tag checker scans a website's <title> tags and flags what's wrong with them: missing titles, duplicates across pages, titles that get cut off in the SERP, or more than one <title> element sitting in the same <head>. Doing this by hand works fine for one homepage. Across a portfolio of client sites it falls apart within a week, because titles change without anyone telling you. Deltio's SEO scanner checks the title tag on every URL in your sitemap automatically, and it compares each scan with the last one so a title that changes gets flagged the day it happens. Plans start at £20 a month, with a 14-day free trial.
If you manage SEO for more than one client, the title tag is the element that never stays put. A template update, a CMS field left blank, a plugin regenerating titles on save: any of these can quietly rewrite what shows up in Google, and nobody on the client side thinks to mention it. Catching that once, during an audit, tells you almost nothing about next month.
What actually goes wrong with a title tag
- Missing: the
<title>element is empty or absent entirely. Google fills the gap itself, pulling from an H1, visible text, or the domain name, and you lose control of what appears in the SERP. - Duplicated: two or more URLs share the exact same title. It happens on paginated category pages, filtered listings, or a CMS that falls back to a default title whenever a field is left blank.
- Too long: past roughly 60 characters, a title risks getting cut off in Google's results, ending mid-word with an ellipsis.
- Too short: a title under about 30 characters wastes the space Google gives you, and usually means the field was never actually written, just auto-filled.
- Multiple
<title>tags: more than one<title>element in the<head>, often caused by a component or a tag manager script injecting its own on top of the CMS default. Browsers only render one, but which one they pick is not something you can rely on.
Why 60 characters is the number to watch
Truncation in the SERP is driven by pixel width, not by a fixed character count, so the real limit shifts with the letters used. A title full of narrow letters can run longer than 60 characters and still display fine; one full of capitals and "W"s can clip earlier. Sixty characters is the practical ceiling most SEOs use because it holds for the vast majority of titles without needing to check pixel width case by case.
Duplicate titles pile up quietly
On a single site, duplicates tend to come from pagination (?page=2, ?page=3 all inheriting the parent title) or from faceted navigation on ecommerce category pages. Across a client portfolio, the same pattern repeats site by site, and nobody notices until a competitor audit or a client's own SEO tool flags it. By then the duplicates might have been live for months.
Checking title tags by hand does not scale
The manual process is simple enough: open view-source: on a page, search for <title>, or use a browser extension that surfaces it in the toolbar. That works for spot-checking one page. It does not work for 40 URLs across 15 client sites, run weekly, without missing something. Nobody keeps that up by hand for long, which is exactly why titles drift unnoticed. It is the same gap we cover in our guide on monitoring client websites for changes.
The check that actually matters is the next one
A title tag audit on day one is useful. What breaks agencies is day ninety, when a developer ships a template change and overwrites titles across a whole section of the site without telling anyone. A one-off audit will never catch that. Only a comparison between one scan and the next does, which is exactly the gap between an audit and monitoring, covered in our piece on SEO monitoring versus an SEO audit.
How Deltio does it
Deltio's SEO scanner checks the title tag, meta description, H1, canonical, lang attribute and hreflang on every URL in the sitemap. For titles specifically, it flags missing, too short, too long, and multiple <title> tags on the same page. Every scan is compared against the one before it, so a changed title triggers an alert the day it happens rather than the day a client notices. Scans run automatically, plus manual scans on demand: 3 a day on Starter, 10 on Professional, unlimited on Enterprise. Alerts go out by email or Slack, in your language.
Add your first site
Add a client site, let the first scan finish, and see what's already wrong with the titles on it. Starter is £24 a month, or £20 a month billed annually, with a 14-day free trial.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a title tag checker?
- A title tag checker is a tool that reads the `<title>` element of a page and flags problems with it: missing, duplicated across URLs, too long, too short, or more than one `<title>` tag in the page's `<head>`. A basic checker looks at one page at a time; a monitoring tool like Deltio checks every URL in a sitemap and repeats the check on a schedule.
- How long should a title tag be?
- Keep it under roughly 60 characters. Google truncates based on pixel width rather than a strict character count, so some titles clip earlier and some run a little longer without truncating, but 60 characters is a safe practical ceiling for most titles written in Latin script.
- What happens if a page has no title tag?
- Google generates its own title for the SERP snippet, usually pulled from the page's H1, visible text near the top of the page, or the domain name. You lose control over what searchers see for that result, and it often reads worse than a written title would.
- Can two pages have the same title tag?
- Technically yes, nothing stops it, but it is a common SEO issue. Duplicate titles typically come from paginated URLs, filtered or faceted category pages, or a CMS falling back to a default title when the field is left blank.
- Does Deltio alert me if a title tag changes?
- Yes. Deltio's SEO scanner checks the title tag on every URL in your sitemap and compares each scan against the previous one. If a title changes, disappears, or a page ends up with multiple `<title>` tags, you get an email or Slack alert the day it happens.
- How much does Deltio cost?
- Starter is £24 a month, or £20 a month billed annually. Professional is £49 a month and Enterprise is £119 a month. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial.