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Thursday, January 12, 2012
Page titles are an important part of our search results: they're the first line of each result
and they're the actual links our searchers click to reach websites. Our advice to webmasters
has always been to write unique, descriptive page titles (and meta descriptions for the snippets)
to describe to searchers what the page is about.
We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the <title>
tag if the webmaster specified one. But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one
to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it
easier for our users to recognize relevant pages. Our testing has shown that these alternative
titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough
rate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is
the reason we show an alternative title.
Other times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive
title specified by the webmaster in the HTML. For example, a title using simply the word "Home"
is not really indicative of what the page is about. Another common issue we see is when a
webmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website's pages, sometimes exactly duplicating
it and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long
or hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives.
For more information about how you can write better titles and meta descriptions, and to learn
more about the signals we use to generate alternative titles, we've recently updated the
Help Center article on this topic.
Also, we try to notify webmasters when we discover titles that can be improved on their websites
through the HTML Suggestions feature in Webmaster Tools; you can find this feature in the
Diagnostics section of the menu on the left hand side.
As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please tell us in the
Webmaster Help Forum.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eGoogle Search often generates alternative page titles to improve search result relevance and click-through rates.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eAlternative titles may be used when original titles are missing, non-descriptive, duplicated, or excessively long.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eWebmasters are encouraged to write unique and descriptive page titles and meta descriptions for better search visibility.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGoogle provides resources like the Help Center and Webmaster Tools to guide webmasters in optimizing titles.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Webmasters should use unique, descriptive page titles and meta descriptions. Search algorithms may generate alternative titles to improve relevance and clickthrough rates, especially when webmasters use non-descriptive titles, duplicate titles across pages, or overly long titles. Alternative titles are shown about half the time. Information on better title writing and signals used for alternatives can be found in the updated Help Center article. Webmasters can find suggestions for improvements in the Webmaster Tools.\n"],null,["# Better page titles in search results\n\nThursday, January 12, 2012\n| Check out out up-to-date documentation about [title links](/search/docs/appearance/title-link).\n\n\nPage titles are an important part of our search results: they're the first line of each result\nand they're the actual links our searchers click to reach websites. Our advice to webmasters\nhas always been to write unique, descriptive page titles (and meta descriptions for the snippets)\nto describe to searchers what the page is about.\n\n\nWe use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the `\u003ctitle\u003e`\ntag if the webmaster specified one. But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one\nto show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it\neasier for our users to recognize relevant pages. Our testing has shown that these alternative\ntitles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough\nrate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is\nthe reason we show an alternative title.\n\n\nOther times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive\ntitle specified by the webmaster in the HTML. For example, a title using simply the word \"Home\"\nis not really indicative of what the page is about. Another common issue we see is when a\nwebmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website's pages, sometimes exactly duplicating\nit and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long\nor hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives.\n\n\nFor more information about how you can write better titles and meta descriptions, and to learn\nmore about the signals we use to generate alternative titles, we've recently updated the\n[Help Center article on this topic](/search/docs/advanced/appearance/good-titles-snippets).\nAlso, we try to notify webmasters when we discover titles that can be improved on their websites\nthrough the HTML Suggestions feature in Webmaster Tools; you can find this feature in the\nDiagnostics section of the menu on the left hand side.\n\n\nAs always, if you have any questions or feedback, please tell us in the\n[Webmaster Help Forum](https://support.google.com/webmasters/community).\n\n\nPosted by [Pierre Far](/search/blog/authors/pierre-far),\nWebmaster Trends Analyst"]]
