In the last few weeks: Google started making major changes to the page title shown in the search results. In the past, there have been slight changes, such as adding the name of a website or removing it. But lately, more examples have emerged that Google generates titles in the light of both headlines, anchor texts and text in general.
So with all these potential changes, we asked ourselves the question: How often is only the specified thing in <title> shown?
To answer this question, we have analysed the page titles of 15 Norwegian websites in the search results of 1096 different keywords.
42% of all page titles shown in search results have changed
Our analysis showed that the page titles shown in the search results differed in 42% of the cases from what was added to the <title> tag of the website. This differs quite much from Google's own estimate that there are about 20% of page titles that will be changed in the search results.
There was little difference between our website or our website or a “normal” website.
On the other hand, we saw a great variation in each individual website/webshop. A website and a online store came out of the test with only 10% change in the titles in the search results that were tested, while we found a website where 81% of the titles were changed.
It is worth mentioning that we don't have a benchmark for how many percent of the page titles that were changed in the search results prior to Google saying that they actively change page titles. We assume that a good part of changes we've observed were changes that were made before as well.
What were the changes in the page titles?
We observed many different changes in the analysis — some of the changes were almost not noticeable and some were large.
It is difficult to see any clear pattern in the data. One more time, the longest titles are going to be down and the very shortest ones are going to be more complementary, which might indicate that Google is trying to make the title as relevant and precise as possible. When a brand new title was generated, these were often downloaded from either: H1 tag on the website or from anchor textsSo let's say that this is the same thing as that. We also observed changes that we could not see were taken directly from the website – which means that Google also adds some sense to the result to interpret what the intention behind the search and the website really is.
To draw some conclusions on how to work with title tags based on this study we've done is still a little early. Google is known for running A/B tests often in the search results and it may be this frequent change in the lookouts disappear if not too long.
So there is no reason to stop the work of writing and writing. Optimise page titles yet. Very often, this title is the base Google makes variations on and it is still shown relatively often too. Titlebars in the title bar are still a ranking factor.
If you regularly complete a SEO audit it may be an idea to put a point on how Google actually shows your page titles, not just reviewing what is listed in title tags.
John Mueller in Google also warns to update your titles to those Google chooses to display. This may be for many reasons, including their being more unique to the specific search or unique applicant – so it can have a negative effect on other search terms or on other applicants. It's not impossible for Google to take the wrong place either.
For example, Charles Meaden discovered that Google had inserted ‘Tax avoidance’ in the page title of the tax office in England and Joe Biden was changed from President to Vice President..
The ‘tax avoidance’ title tag rewrite is more pronounced on mobile@HMRCgovuk – are you aware of this issue? pic.twitter.com/IdMYE9JevU — Charles Meaden (@charlesmeaden) September 6, 2021
Do you need help getting more visible in your search engines? Here you can read more about how we work with SEO and how we can assist you in: become more visibleSo let's say that this is the same thing as that.