UPDATED 2012-04-02
I showed recently Google will use the next available Header, be it a H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6 if your page title element is screwed.
The snippet below shows Google using a H6 header as the page title.
Yahoo and Bing now much work the same (as Bing actually powers Yahoo search now) – Bing and Yahoo will display as many characters as possible in the title tag. I would expect these to change to a more similar approach to Google’s in the coming year(s).
Yahoo:
Bing:
More Reading on Page Titles for SEO:
- Home Page Title Is Wrong In Google Search Results
- How Many Characters In A Page Title For Google SEO?
- How Many Words In A Page Title Tag?
- Dynamic Titles In Google SERP Snippet
- How Google, Yahoo & MSN Handle Title Snippets If They Choke
- No Page Title In Google Results
- Google Will Use H1,H2,H3,H4,H5 & H6 Headers As Titles
- How Many Title Tag Characters Will Google Display in a Search Snippet
Interesting observations, I also tried MSN, Yahoo and Ask after I read your last post about google’s handling of large titles. I would say Yahoo does a pretty good job.