The SEO Implications of Google Rewriting Title Tags
At this point, everyone knows that Google's algorithm tends to switch itself up quite often. Part of that is their recent change in their system in terms of web page title generation for search results. The search engine giant's system is currently in the process of replacing web page titles with text on-page that it thinks could best describe the content in question. It does this no matter what the user's query is about.
Needless to say, there are certain search engine optimization (SEO) implications to these changes. Read on to learn about the key points:
What Change Did Google Make?
Google used to apply whatever users type into the search box for search result snippets' titles. They no longer take the query of a searcher into account for generating titles. There's a new system instead which, as previously mentioned, uses on-page text. The resulting titles give a clearer picture of relevance, are much easier to read, and are higher in terms of searcher preferences.
Title Tags in SERPs Are Being Rewritten
The HTML title tag of a webpage doesn't always describe the content specifically. Issues that come up include:
- Keyword stuffing
- No boilerplate text
- Title tags being too long
In response, search engine results pages (SERPs) title tags are being rewritten by Google.
“Overall, our update is designed to produce more readable and accessible titles for pages. In some cases, we may add site names where that is seen as helpful," Google public Search Liaison Danny Sullivan said. "In other instances, when encountering an extremely long title, we might select the most relevant portion rather than starting at the beginning and truncating more useful parts.”
What Does This Mean for Manually Creating Unique Titles?
This change may give people the impression that it's no longer necessary to make HTML title tags that are optimized and relevant. It is simply not the case; creating unique titles is still quite crucial. Chances are, the original HTML title tags will be used. Sullivan says the likelihood is at a whopping 80%.
So What Is the New Title Tag System of Google Like?
The new way is "dynamic," Sullivan said on Twitter. If the HTML title tag of an already-published page is changed somehow, the changes will be acknowledged by Google. That said, the system will assess the text and use the results of that to determine if the modified title tag should be shown on SERPs.
The page title will not be replaced by Google if title tags represent the content a searcher will find accurately and they're optimized properly.
So far, it has been seen to affect websites in a number of ways. In some cases, reports of capitalization errors and traffic loss were reported. However, there is no way for websites to skip the update. Instead, a new title tag can be written if Google's change is not satisfactory.
Conclusion
Google recently made a notable change in its system. Title tags in search engine results pages are being rewritten. This is a compulsory update; if Google doesn't do a satisfactory job, however, title tags can be manually rewritten and optimized.
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