Hey Frank
Only issue is that human-friendly titles probably wont ever be seen unless you're in the top 5.
Google will display up to 68, or in some cases 70 characters BTW. I have a plugin that mimics the SERP display for any page you're on.
It's a difficult one, but I tend to think that in the long run Google wants to do what's best for humans, so while human friendly titles may actually hurt in the short run, you have to imagine that as Google gets cleverer they will favour what's good for users over what's good for bots more and more...
Good news is that you can probably test this out to see how it might affect your rankings, and if you hold as much else constant while you test, revert back if it has a negative impact.
Rgds
Richard |