This is highly inaccurate. Title tags have EVERY implication on ranking for a keyword. For the most competitive keywords in the world, it's very possible that c

This is highly inaccurate. Title tags have EVERY implication on ranking for a keyword. For the most competitive keywords in the world, it's very possible that certain sites could rank without having it in the title tag due to the sheer volume of people linking to them with relevant anchor text, but this is highly unlikely. And more importantly, it doesn't make sense not to do it, because it's pretty ridiculous to put UX in front of strong SEO in title tags, because the large majority of users completely ignore the title tags - UNLESS they show up in search results. And, yes, you can't show up in search results (most often) unless you have SEO-optimized title tags. I would recommend serving up a specific SEO-title tag, and then another, closely related article title on the page itself - at least as it comes to news pieces. And the other hand, I'd agree that it is in companies best interest to have the title tags short enough to get their brand in there - because brand relevancy helps CTR substantially. When CTR goes up, ranking may increase since Google is looking at these things in their algo. Then you get more clicks, views and links, and it starts a downhill, positive domino effect for your website. SEOMofo has a great tool for making sure you don't breach Google's title tag/meta description character limit in the SERPs: http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html