A Shorter Google Title Tag After Redesign? Maybe.

Google has a new design and with that your title tag length, the blue clickable link in the Google search results, may be impacted.

Pete Meyers from Moz posted New Title Tag Guidelines & Preview Tool. He says the new title tag length is not set at 55 or a specific length, but ranges between 42 and 68 depending on Google's algorithm.

Here is the distribution chart on how likely it would be a specific character length:

I should note, this has no impact on rankings. Just because Google cuts off your title tag, it doesn't mean it isn't used in its entirety for rankings. But it does mean that your title tags may be less click friendly.

A WebmasterWorld thread is seeing a lot of questions about the title tag changes.

As martinibuster put it:

This is just the display of the Title tag, not the consumption of it by the algorithm. So, as you already noted, a shorter title may be more general. I'm not changing anything for Google. If a slightly longer title makes sense then that's what's going in the title.

This doesn't really change anything for me, though. I don't do exact match longtail titles. Prefer to match it generally in the title and more exactly in the text of the content.

Check out the Moz post for more details.

Google Index Status Reports Now With HTTPS & Subdirectories

Google announced the Index Status reports within Google Webmaster Tools now lets you differentiate between HTTP, HTTPS and subdirectories.

Google's John Mueller said "If you're a data-driven SEO (or just love to see how your site's indexed), you'll love this change :). In Webmaster Tools, we've now made it possible to differentiate the "index status" information for http / https as well as for subdirectories." Zineb explained "you can now see index status data for your HTTPS sites and subdirectories."

You will see on the report an "update" line that will convey when the reporting changed to handle this.

As of March 9, 2014, the Index Status reflects the data of your specific protocol and site combination as it is verified in Webmaster Tools (i.e. distinguishing www and https variations).

Here are the technical details:

We do not show aggregate data for all versions of your site. While Google crawls and indexes content from your site regardless of whether you have verified the site in Webmaster Tools, the number of indexed URLs reported in Index status are specific to those associated with your site version.

For example, suppose you have a site with 10 URLs that people can view without signing in, and 100 URLs that people can only see once they sign into your site. If you have added only one version of your site to Webmaster Tools (e.g. http://www.example.com), you would see Index status totals only for the non-secure portion of your site, which would be a much lower number than for all URLs on your site.

Therefore, in order to see the index count for your secure site, you will need to add it to Webmaster Tools (e.g. https://www.example.com) and then select it from the Site Selector.

Similarly, you can verify a subdirectory of your site with Webmaster Tools, and only data for that subdirectory will be shown in its Index status (www.example.com/blog/). However, the top-level domain will continue to reflect the total count of URLs indexed for that domain.