"Keep titles under 60 characters."

"Keep titles under 60 characters."

No. You're measuring the wrong unit.

The SERP truncates by pixel width, not character count, and the two disagree badly. "Illimitable Williamson" and "iiiiii" have the same character count and wildly different widths. A title of 60 W's overflows; 60 i's barely starts.

So the real comparison is character-count tools versus pixel-width tools. Character counters (most plugins) are a rough proxy that fails on wide or narrow text. Pixel-width checkers (Screaming Frog's column, Mangools' SERP simulator) measure the thing that actually truncates — roughly 580px on desktop.

When does it matter? Brand-heavy titles full of caps and W's, or titles where the keyword sits near the cutoff. There, characters lie and pixels tell the truth.

When doesn't it? Most of the time, which is why the 60-char myth survives — it's right by accident on average-width English.

(And truncation isn't a penalty. A clipped title that front-loads the keyword still ranks. It just reads worse.)