You’ve got the counter in place, titles in green and descriptions inside the limit. That doesn’t mean your metas are right: it means they fit. This post is the review worth running before you sign off the on-page SEO of a PrestaShop 8 catalogue — five checks you can do from your own BackOffice.
60 and 160 aren’t a rule, they’re a space limit
The two numbers every counter uses — 60 characters for the meta_title, 160 for the meta_description — are approximations of the pixel width a search engine usually displays. They’re not a Google rule and not a ranking factor: they’re the point where your text will probably get cut.
Which gives you two ways to get them wrong:
- Going over and leaving the important part past the cut. If your title puts the brand at the end, the brand is exactly what disappears.
- Falling well short and wasting the space. A 25-character title fits perfectly and says nothing; the counter approves it just the same.
A counter tells you whether it fits. The five checks below are the ones that tell you whether it works.
1 · Did you write them, or is PrestaShop filling them in?
When a product’s meta_title field is empty, PrestaShop doesn’t leave a gap: it uses the product name. The page looks fine and the catalogue looks complete, but nobody wrote that title.
You can spot it fast in Catalog → Products: if the SEO tab title matches the product name letter for letter across a run of products, you’re not looking at written metas, you’re looking at the default. The description is worse — if it’s empty, the search engine builds the snippet from page text, and at that point you’re not the one deciding.
2 · Duplicates: the same title on twenty products
This is the most common finding in catalogues with variants. Twenty products differing only in size or colour end up with the same meta_title word for word, competing against each other for the same query.
Review it by family, not product by product: take a category with plenty of variants and compare all its titles at once. If you can’t tell two products apart from the title alone, neither can the search engine.
3 · The template that eats your useful space
Plenty of catalogues build the title from a fixed pattern like “Brand | Category | Product | Store”. It looks tidy, and it spends the first characters — the ones people actually read — on information repeated across every product.
- What’s specific to the product goes first; the store brand goes last, or nowhere.
- If the category is already in the product name, don’t repeat it in the title.
- One separator is enough. Three blocks and two separators already eat a third of the limit.
4 · What you wrote versus what the search engine shows
The meta_description is a proposal, not an obligation: a search engine can replace it with a snippet from the page itself if that answers the query better. It happens less with the title, but it happens.
The only way to know is to look at your real results in Search Console and compare them against what’s in the product. If the snippet doesn’t resemble your description, that’s not a counter problem: your description wasn’t answering that query.
5 · PrestaShop 8’s native counter, and why it’s worth a second look
The V2 product page in PrestaShop 8 already ships its own length hint. The problem shows up when you also install a counter: you end up with two indicators on the same field, which don’t always count the same way or warn at the same point, and you end up trusting whichever one is closer.
That’s why Zeyvro Meta Counter hides the native counter on the V2 page when it’s active: not as a style preference, but because two counters disagreeing on the same field are worse than none.
The shortcut, if you’d rather see it as you type
The five checks above work with or without a counter. What the module changes is the timing: the 60 and 160 character warning shows up in the BackOffice forms while you write, instead of discovering the cut once it’s published. It’s free and MIT licensed. If you’re coming in earlier in the series, why the native counter falls short and how to build your own step by step are the two previous posts.
Frequently asked questions
Are 60 and 160 characters an official Google limit?
No. They approximate the pixel width usually shown before the cut. They’re not a rule and not a ranking factor: going over means the tail end probably won’t be visible.
If I leave the meta title empty in PrestaShop, what gets published?
PrestaShop uses the product name. The page looks fine and the catalogue looks complete, but nobody wrote that title: it’s the default value.
Why isn’t my description the one showing in search results?
Because the meta description is a proposal, not an obligation: the search engine can replace it with a snippet from the page if that answers the query better. When that happens the problem isn’t length, it’s that your description wasn’t answering that search.
I have twenty variants of one product — does each need its own meta title?
Each needs to be distinguishable from the others at minimum. If you can’t tell two products apart from the title alone, they’re competing against each other for the same query.
Can I run two counters at once on the product page?
You can, and it’s a bad idea: they don’t always count the same way or warn at the same point. Zeyvro Meta Counter hides the native V2 counter precisely to avoid two indicators disagreeing on the same field.
The 60 and 160 character warning in the BackOffice, while you type. Free, MIT.
Zeyvro Meta Counter for PrestaShop 8 →Zeyvro builds PrestaShop 8 modules from a real store in production. Unobfuscated code.