According to RankRanger, Google has extended the number of characters they show for the title in the search results snippets from an average of 55 characters to 67.5 characters. That is a 20% increase in the length of the average number of characters in the title of the search results snippets.
Here is a screen shot from their tracking tool showing the increase began on September 11th, the same date we reported on an unconfirmed update:
This is a global change, impacting all regions of Google, not just the US. But it does not seem to impact the mobile results - it only impacts the desktop results.
Last December, Google showed more characters for the descriptions in the snippets and shortly after reduced the count having to defend itself for that decision. So I do find it weird that Google would significantly change how much they show in the snippets after all this debate - but it seems they have.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
