Is Google Ignoring The HTML Title Tag More Often?

title tagGoogle’s long created title tags from means other than using the HTML title tag, however, there are reports that it might be increasing the times it does so.

A WebmasterWorld thread has dozens of webmasters complaining that Google is not using their HTML title tags. The HTML title tag is often used by Google as the blue hyperlink in the Google search results. The words used in that hyperlink can often mean a click or skip when a searcher is scanning the available search results for a query. So when Google decided to not use your HTML title tag, you are hopeful that Google picks something more ‘click-worthy’.

As I said, it is not completely unheard of for Google to not use your HTML title tag but it appears that Google has increased the rate at which they do not use the title tag. The thread has many many complaints. One webmaster explained that he can craft a title much better than any algorithm. He said, “PEOPLE GET THE TITLE! ALGOs DON’T.”

We will reach out to Google to see if they have made any changes to how they handle title tag placement. If we hear anything, we will make sure to update this post.

For more, see our article Writing HTML Title Tags For Humans, Google & Bing.

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | SEO: Titles & Descriptions | Top News


About The Author: is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here.

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  • computerklaus

    Wouldn´t this be a step further towards spam fighting by Google?
    Then again – don´t they have anything more important to do than this?

  • http://advanceinternet.com/ Ryan Miller

    One of the more common instances I’ve seen for this is where Google uses the page name of the root URL as it listed with the DMOZ listing over the actual title tag from the homepage.

  • http://www.michael-martinez.com/ Michael Martinez

    If Google is providing its users with more relevant and meaningful page titles, the SEOs need to shut up. No page title can be everything to all queries.

    I’m sure people are feeling anxious about Google “getting it wrong” but the proof is in the search referral and conversion data, not in what the SEOs believe should be seen in every SERP.

  • http://www.webenrich.com Web Enrich

    Looks like this a first step towards spam fighting by Google on HTML Title Tags…

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