Product title — formula, byte limits, brand placement.

The product title is the single highest-leverage piece of text on the listing. It feeds three systems at once: Amazon's ranking algorithm (which indexes every word), the shopper's scanning eye on the SERP tile, and the shopper's confirmation moment on the PDP itself.

The formula

A title that survives the SERP, the PDP and the rules looks like:

Brand — Product type — 2–3 key attributes — variant / size / quantity

Everything before the second em-dash is what shoppers see on a mobile SERP tile. Everything after it is bonus context the algorithm can still index.

The limits nobody agrees on

• Style-guide ceiling: 200 characters across most categories.
• Practical ceiling: ~150 chars — Amazon has been known to suppress search visibility for very long titles.
• Mobile SERP truncation: ~60–70 characters before the ellipsis.
• Mobile PDP truncation: ~80 characters before the "see more" link.

Optimise for the first 60 characters as if they were the whole title — because on the most-used surface, they are.

Brand placement: front or back?

The style guide says brand first. For most categories that is correct because it sets context (and Amazon is strict about it). The exception is unbranded / generic categories where putting the product type first wins more clicks and the brand can move to the second segment.

What does NOT belong in the title

• Promotional language: "Best", "#1", "Free shipping" — suppressible.
• Symbols beyond -, ,, &, /.
• Competitor brand names (TOS-breach).
• ALL CAPS marketing slogans.

How to test a title

Paste it into a phone preview at 60, 80, and 150 chars. If the first 60 chars don't make the buying decision obvious — rewrite. The byte limit is the easy part; the truncation point is where most titles silently lose clicks.