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Control your title links in search results
A title link is the title of a search result on Google Search and other properties (for example, Google News) that links to the web page. Google uses a number of different sources to automatically determine the title link, but you can indicate your preferences by following our best practices for influencing title links.
Best practices for influencing title links
Title links are critical to giving users a quick insight into the content of a result and why it's relevant to their query. It's often the primary piece of information people use to decide which result to click on, so it's important to use high-quality title text on your web pages.
- Make sure every page on your site has a title specified in the
<title>
element. - Write descriptive and concise text for your
<title>
elements. Avoid vague descriptors like "Home" for your home page, or "Profile" for a specific person's profile. Also avoid unnecessarily long or verbose text in your<title>
elements, which is likely to get truncated when it shows up in search results. - Avoid keyword stuffing. It's sometimes helpful to have a few descriptive terms in the
<title>
element, but there's no reason to have the same words or phrases appear multiple times. Title text like "Foobar, foo bar, foobars, foo bars" doesn't help the user, and this kind of keyword stuffing can make your results look spammy to Google and to users. - Avoid repeated or boilerplate text in
<title>
elements. It's important to have distinct, descriptive text in the<title>
element for each page on your site. Titling every page on a commerce site "Cheap products for sale", for example, makes it impossible for users to distinguish between two pages. Long text in the<title>
element that varies by only a single piece of information ("boilerplate" titles) is also bad; for example, a common<title>
element for all pages with text like "Band Name - See videos, lyrics, posters, albums, reviews and concerts" contains a lot of uninformative text.One solution is to dynamically update the
<title>
element to better reflect the actual content of the page. For example, include the words "video", "lyrics", etc., only if that particular page contains video or lyrics. Another option is to just use the actual name of the band as a concise text in the<title>
element and use the meta description to describe your page's content. - Brand your titles concisely. The
<title>
element on your site's home page is a reasonable place to include some additional information about your site. For example:<title>
ExampleSocialSite, a place for people to meet and mingle</title>
<title>
element of every single page on your site will look repetitive if several pages from your site are returned for the same query. In this case, consider including just your site name at the beginning or end of each<title>
element, separated from the rest of the text with a delimiter such as a hyphen, colon, or pipe, like this:<title>
ExampleSocialSite: Sign up for a new account.</title>
- Make it clear which text is the main title for the page. Google looks at various sources when creating title links, including the main visual title, heading elements, and other large and prominent text, and it can be confusing if multiple headings carry the same visual weight and prominence. Consider ensuring that your main title is distinctive from other text on a page and stands out as being the most prominent on the page (for example, using a larger font, putting the title text in the first visible
<h1>
element on the page, etc). - Be careful about disallowing search engines from crawling your pages. Using the robots.txt protocol on your site can stop Google from crawling your pages, but it may not always prevent them from being indexed. For example, Google may index your page if we discover it by following a link from someone else's site. If we don't have access to the content on your page, we will rely on off-page content to generate the title link, such as anchor text from other sites. To prevent a URL from being indexed, you can use the
noindex
directive. - Use the same script and language as the primary content on your pages. Google tries to show a title link that matches the primary script and language of a page. If Google determines that a
<title>
element does not match the script or language of the page's primary content, we may choose a different text as the title link.
How title links in Google Search are created
Google's generation of title links on the Google Search results page is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page and references to it that appear on the web. The goal of the title link is to best represent and describe each result.
Google Search uses the following sources to automatically determine title links:
- Content in
<title>
elements - Main visual title shown on the page
- Heading elements, such as
<h1>
elements - Other content that's large and prominent through the use of style treatments
- Other text contained in the page
- Anchor text on the page
- Text within links that point to the page
Keep in mind that Google has to recrawl and reprocess the page to notice updates to these sources, which may take a few days to a few weeks. If you've made changes, you can request that Google recrawl your pages.
While we can't manually change title links for individual sites, we're always working to make them as relevant as possible. You can help improve the quality of the title link that's displayed for your page by following the best practices.
Troubleshooting common issues
Here are the most common issues we see with title links in search results. To avoid these issues, follow the best practices for controlling title links.
Common issues | |
---|---|
Half-empty | When part of the title text is missing. For example:
Google Search looks at information in header elements or other large and prominent text on the page to produce a title link: Product Name | Site Name |
Obsolete | When the same page is used year-after-year for recurring information, but the
In this example, the page has a large, visible title that says "2021 admissions criteria", and the 2021 admissions criteria - University of Awesome |
Inaccurate | When the
Google Search tries to determine if the Stuffed animals - Site Name |
Micro-boilerplate text in | When there are repeated boilerplate text in
Google Search can detect the season number used in large, prominent title text and insert the season number in the title link: Season 1 - My so-called amazing TV show Season 2 - My so-called amazing TV show Season 3 - My so-called amazing TV show |
No clear main title | When there's more than one large, prominent heading, and it isn't clear which text is the main title of the page. For example, a page has two or more headings that use the same styling or heading level. If Google Search detects that there are multiple large, prominent headings, it may use the first heading as the text for the title link. Consider ensuring that your main heading is distinctive from other text on a page and stands out as being the most prominent on the page (for example, using a larger font, putting the title text in the first visible |
Mismatch of script or language used in | When the script or language of the text in |
Duplication of the site name in the | In the case of domain-level site names, Google may omit the site name from the title link, if it's repetitive with the site name that's already shown in the search result. |
Submitting feedback about title links
If you're seeing your pages appear in the search results with modified title links, check whether your page has one of the issues that Google adjusts for. If not, consider whether the title link in search results is a better fit for the query. If you still think the original title text would be better, let us know in our Google Search Central Help Community.
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2022-10-14 UTC.
Source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link
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