YouTube Character Counter

YouTube Character Limits (And What Actually Shows)

100 characters for titles, 5,000 for descriptions. But what actually shows in search results? About 60-70 characters of your title and maybe 150 of your description. Everything else is hidden unless people click to expand.

So yeah, front-load everything important. Your main keyword, the hook, what people will learn - all in those first visible characters. The rest is for timestamps, links, and secondary SEO stuff.

What I Focus On

• Title: Main keyword near the start. Numbers help (like "5 Ways to..."). Stay under 60 characters or get cut off.
• First 150 of description: This is your search preview. Make it count. Keyword + hook + what they'll get from watching.
• Rest of description: Timestamps (people love those), links, related videos, secondary keywords. Nobody reads this but it helps SEO.
• Hashtags: 3-5 max. Use more than 15 and YouTube ignores ALL of them. Seriously.

YouTube's Character Counting System

Your 100-character title looks complete in the studio editor. Then you check how it appears in search results and half of it is gone. YouTube cuts titles at around 60-70 characters depending on the width of the letters (W and M take more space than i and l). On mobile it's even shorter, sometimes as low as 40 characters before the dreaded ellipsis shows up.

Descriptions have this fold behavior that trips people up. You get 5,000 characters total, but only the first 150-ish show before YouTube hides everything behind "Show more." Most viewers never click that button. They see your preview, decide if they're interested, and either watch or scroll. So those first two or three sentences? That's your entire sales pitch.

Timestamps and links count as regular characters. A timestamp like "00:00 Intro" is 11 characters. URLs count their full length even though YouTube shortens them visually. If you're adding chapters to your video (which you should for watch time), each one eats into your description budget. Same with affiliate links, social media URLs, all of it.

Tags used to have their own character budget but YouTube basically deprecated them. Now hashtags in your description are what matter, and you get exactly 15 before YouTube punishes you. Comments technically allow 10,000 characters, but there's a weird hidden rule where comments with links get truncated at around 500 characters unless you click to expand. I have no idea why.

Optimizing Your YouTube Text for Discovery

Front-loading keywords isn't just SEO advice, it's survival. YouTube's algorithm reads your title left to right. So does Google when it indexes your video. Put the main keyword in the first five words if possible. I used to write creative, catchy titles that buried the keyword at the end. Views were terrible. Swapped the word order, same video, views tripled.

Description structure matters more than length. First 150 characters: your hook and main keyword again. Next section: timestamps if it's a longer video (anything over 5 minutes benefits from chapters). After that, a longer explanation with related keywords woven in naturally, not stuffed. Then links, social media, affiliate disclaimers, whatever. YouTube's crawler reads all 5,000 characters even if humans don't.

Chapters and timestamps are secretly powerful for discovery. When you add them, YouTube shows your video for more specific search queries. Someone searching "how to make sourdough starter" might find your 30-minute bread video because you timestamped that exact section. Plus, viewers can jump to the part they care about, which keeps them watching instead of clicking away when they realize your video is long.

Hashtags in descriptions work differently than on other platforms. Put three at the very top of your description and those show up above your title as clickable links. Useful for broad category tags like #cooking or #tech. The rest of your hashtags can go anywhere in the description, but remember the 15 total limit. Go over that and YouTube nukes all of them, which seems harsh but apparently people were abusing it. Community posts have their own limits too - 10,000 characters but nobody reads past the first paragraph, so keep those tight.

Frequently Asked Questions