Google Confirms an Update to Generating Web Page Titles

  • Kevin Oskow
  • September 13, 2021
  • 6 Minute Read
Google Confirms an Update to Generating Web Page Titles

What’s the change? How does it affect page titles? Google is now considering “the main visual title or headline shown on a page. You can no longer rely on Google’s way of generating web page titles. You may want to go back to the drawing board and generate new titles for your web pages.

The search engine giant has been busy altering how it generates page titles for web pages in search engine result pages.

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 Google has confirmed overnight that they are updating the code which generates the page title. The new code will be targeting ‘the main visual title or headline shown on a page’ rather than the traditional <title> tag.

Google explains why this change happened

Websites that optimize their URLs for Google have a better chance of getting crawled and shown on search engines. This improves the likelihood that people will see your content and come back to your website (as well as driving more traffic).

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Knowing how Google generates titles helps you tailor your title tags and meta descriptions so that potential clients or other users find what you have to say more easily.

We all love seeing our titles appear above the search results page (SERP). But how do you know if you have landed on the page of an excellent source? Title Tags and Meta Descriptions tell Google a lot about the quality of a website – including keywords available in the search engine.

Some people think that title tags and meta descriptions determine what people see when they search for information online. These days, you need both. The problem is that some search engines interpret title tags as descriptions and vice versa. That means you can get keywords in the Google title tag that might not show up in the meta description or vice versa. To make sure your title tags are effective, you need to learn how they work and ensure they’re irrelevant to the content you’re trying to rank.

Google listens to the searcher

Google page title length has updated its title generation algorithm to prioritize factors that help web searchers find relevant content. This may affect how your titles appear in a SERP preview. Some keywords are immune to Title Score change, but you should still monitor your IP for these changes. In theory, this update should make your web browsing experience faster and more fun.

Danny Sullivan, a Google spokesperson, says that Google has leveled up with web page titles so that they don’t change based on the search query.

The most recent update to Google’s ranking algorithms is aimed squarely at speeding up the process of getting ranked without sacrificing too many search engine optimizers (SEO).

Google wants to give its customers what they want more quickly, and this update is their attempt to do that. 

Google has been gradually introducing title tags to their search results. The new feature learns how you interact with a web page and gives you a better user experience. If you include video, images or other special features in your web pages, the google search title tag will be significant for helping searchers find those elements easily. In addition to having a better title tag, Google will also display related pages on the first page if there are any — something that might not have happened before.

Google is trying to rank the best answer to the searcher’s query

Google’s new title scheme has been a long time coming. The update is rolling out to some search engines, including Google- caching the answers on pages that have been penalized by the spammy AdSense system.

Danny Sullivan believes that the new web page title tag will be dynamic.

This means Google sees your ‘top’ content as a real ranking factor in organic SERPs. It also means that when you write great content, people will see it and maybe even take action on it, leading to more traffic and more conversions.

The new title system uses actual content from pages to explain what they are about.

The search engine giant is changing how it ranks websites. The new approach is based on how relevant a website’s content is to the search query. When a user types in a search term, Google looks at the quality of answers provided by a website (including website architecture and technical quality), links from third-party websites, and other factors to display the best possible solutions. The update does not apply to all languages or all searches.

How to assess the impact?

When it comes to Google SERPs, there’s a lot of thought to optimize keywords and titles. A recent update by Google gave increased weight to improving your title tags. Using the new title tags, you can optimize your rankings and cut down on the amount of time it takes for search engines to retrieve your content from the web. SERPs are refreshed daily, so be sure to keep an eye on them to ensure your titles are staying relevant.

It’s time to update your approach to writing titles for your web pages.

It’s been a while since Google tweaked their search engine, and many web admins noticed a change in the way pages were being generated. With this update, there is now a page title that contains information about the page itself. You can bet your bottom dollar that this change has something to do with organic search rankings; better titles = more organic traffic + more click-through rates.

How can you use the new title generation to your advantage?

Google recently updated their site structure to “title scans” are now more likely to show your content for related searches. As a result, you may find that title collision happens less often. This is a good thing because it can help you improve your rankings on search engines such as Google.

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Use the keywords in the new titles to better entice searchers to click on your listing.

Think of a title as the first impression of your content. Titles can make or break conversion. People decide whether to follow you or not by how strongly they believe your content to be worth their time. The problem is that people have very different expectations about what constitutes appealing web page titles. Google has confirmed that they are updating their algorithms to prioritize titles that include keywords in the description field over titles that don’t.

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Tips for responding to this change

1) With this change come some new SEO opportunities and the potential for significant revenue improvements on some websites. If you’re having difficulty ranking high in search results for some reason, it might be time to pay attention.

And, as always, remember to test different drive URLs for your text and check out the animated mouse over results for any anomalies that you see – these things could indicate significant changes down the road for how SERPs work.

2) Even the slightest tweak to Google search affects thousands of domains, directly affecting where traffic is directed, so it’s essential to understand these changes and how they impact your website.

3) Google has recently changed how it titles web pages, explicitly affecting websites with Robots.txt file protection. This means that if you track your URLs manually (which you probably should), then the titles might not show up in Google search results anymore. 

This is a known issue, and a simple fix is to add the robots.txt file before including your website’s HTML code into your page. Fortunately, there is a simple solution for this: put the following code between the <head> and </head> tags of your page (don’t forget to replace <head> with the actual name of the directory containing your website’s files)

4) The update may cause issues with identifying and ranking titles well. Hence, you must make the most of this update by ensuring that your URLs are valid, link building and otherwise optimizing your content to ensure maximum potential impact. 

5) Change the font size for localized languages. Please remove white space between keywords and phrases when displaying localized titles.

6) Linking to pages outside of your registrar’s domain name space. These changes shouldn’t dramatically affect your domain’s search engine ranking impacts. Still, if you see a discernible difference in your rankings, this is an indicator that you should make changes to your domain’s URLs.

Conclusion

Google has quietly confirmed that it is now considering the main visual title or headline shown on a page when ranking web pages titles for search. Titles may be different from what you would expect Google to use when displaying search results. Titles are likely to be more conversational and natural rather than being stuffed with keywords.

Kevin OskowLinkedin

VP - Client Success
Based in San Diego, Kevin takes ownership of the client success at Uplers as the VP. Along with being an aspiring pianist, a proficient communicator, and a hiking lover, he is highly experienced. With more than 2 decades of proven track record, he can proactively lead your marketing, web development, and client experience teams.

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