The brand-first formula
Google matches products against searches, so the title must lead with what identifies the item: brand, product, key attribute. “Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 40 Running Shoes, Women, Size 8, Black” matches queries at every word; “Running Shoes” matches nothing and competes with everything. Put size, colour, material and model number in the title when they distinguish the product — that detail belongs here, not buried in the description.
The 150-character limit
Titles longer than 150 characters are truncated or rejected, and most placements show far less — front-load ruthlessly. The usual culprit is concatenated variant options: automatically generated titles that glue every option together overrun quietly. Put identifying information in the first 70 characters and move the rest to the description.
The three formatting traps
- Promotional text. SALE, FREE SHIPPING, percent-off and repeated exclamation marks are prohibited outright. Offers belong in promotions or sale prices.
- All caps. Supplier imports arrive shouting; Shopify displays them fine and Google disapproves them. Sentence case, keeping genuine acronyms and brand capitalisation.
- Keyword stuffing. Repeating the keyword five ways reads as manipulation and can escalate to misrepresentation — a far worse category than a formatting rejection.
When dozens of titles share a flaw, the bug is in the title template or the import mapping. Editing titles one by one does not survive the next sync.
Near-duplicate titles
Two distinct products sharing an identical title look like duplicate listings and both can be rejected. The classic collision is the “mini” or multipack version against the parent. Differentiate with the attribute that differs — size, count, colour — or merge true duplicates into one product with variants.
Title audit checklist
- Every title starts with the brand (or vendor set to the real manufacturer)
- No title exceeds 150 characters; key info sits in the first 70
- Zero promotional words, zero all-caps, zero repeated punctuation
- No two products share an identical title
- Variant attributes (size, colour, count) included where they distinguish
Related error guides: title too long · all-caps titles · promotional text · duplicate titles
Shipwork scans every title in your public catalogue for length, caps, promotional patterns and duplicates — and names the exact products carrying them. Free, no account, no signup — paste your store address.
Check my titlesQuestions
- Where does the brand go in a Shopping title?
- First. Brand, product, key attribute — in that order. Google matches left to right and shoppers scan the same way.
- How long can a Google Shopping title be?
- 150 characters hard limit, but front-load the identifying information into the first 70 — most placements show far less than the full title.
- Can I include size and colour in the title?
- Yes, when they distinguish the product. Size, colour, material and model number are identifying attributes, not keyword stuffing.
- Is repeating keywords in the title risky?
- Yes. Beyond wasting space, aggressive repetition can be read as misrepresentation, which is an account-level problem rather than a single rejected product.
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