Text too long: how to fix it
What causes the "Text too long" error on titles and descriptions in Merchant Center and how to shorten them without losing what matters.
"Text too long" means your title (over 150 characters) or description (over 5000 characters) has been truncated by Google. Shorten it to fit and put the most important detail first, since truncation cuts from the end.
What triggers it
Google enforces hard character limits: 150 for title, 5000 for description. Anything longer isn't rejected outright, it's truncated at the limit, which often cuts a title mid-word or a description mid-sentence. The flag is Google telling you the stored value is longer than what shoppers will actually see.
The practical risk is what gets cut. Titles built by concatenating brand, category, attributes and marketing copy in one long string tend to lose the differentiating detail (size, colour, model number) at the end, right where truncation strikes.
/tools' enrichment writes titles and descriptions that fit within Google's limits from the outset, with the highest-value detail placed first, so nothing meaningful gets cut off by truncation.
Step by step
- Check which field is over the limit. Titles are capped at 150 characters, descriptions at 5000. Diagnostics tells you which field triggered the flag.
- Front-load the important detail. Put brand, product type and the key differentiator (size, colour, model) in the first 70 characters of the title, since that's what shows in most placements before any truncation.
- Trim padding, not information. Cut filler words, repeated brand mentions and keyword stuffing before you cut real product detail.
- Resubmit and check the rendered length. Push the shortened feed. This is a data fix and clears on the next crawl.