The brand-first title tag mistake

The brand-first title tag mistake

"Put your brand at the front of the title for recognition."

No.

Google rewrites or truncates the tail, not the head. Lead with Brand | Keyword and on a 580px-wide SERP the keyword is the part that gets eaten by the ellipsis. You bought recognition you already had (people clicked your result, they know it's you) and spent it on the slot that does conversion work.

Here's what actually happens: the failure mode is invisible because the title looks fine in your CMS field. It only breaks at render width, which your preview plugin fakes with a character count instead of pixel width.

Fix: keyword-led, brand as the suffix, and check the truncation in an actual pixel-width tool, not a 60-character ruler. (If your brand genuinely is the query, ignore all of this — you're a different case.)