Page titles have a big impact on CTR because they provide important context to search engines, but a recent study suggests that Google rewrite page title more than 60% of the time.
A recent study Zyppy.com, analyzed more than 80,000 title tags from 2,370 websites to determine how many website title tags were used in search results. They found that the search giant rewrote at least partially 61.6% of title tags.
Further inspection revealed that specific factors contributed to the chances of a title tag rewrite. Google’s goal is to provide searchers with the best possible title tags to give context to the content a web page contains. If the title tag is not up to standard, then Google’s algorithm will change it.
This is often frustrating for website owners and SEO experts who spend a lot of time crafting the perfect title tag. Google’s changes ranged from a single word to a complete rewrite of a title tag.
Factors for page title changes
This is promising for sites that want to use page titles as-is. Research shows that certain factors increase the likelihood that Google will rewrite title tags, but that doesn’t mean that compliance with these rules is a guarantee.
Title is too short or too long
The ideal page title length is between 50-60 characters. If the page title is too long, Google truncates the search results, which leads to a negative user experience, and the short title doesn’t provide the information searchers are looking for.
Of the more than 2,370 websites analyzed, Google rewrote over 95% of extremely short and extremely long title tags. Page titles longer than 70 characters changed 99.9%, and titles 1 to 5 characters changed 96.6%.
It makes sense that Google would rewrite extremely short and extremely long page titles to better understand site content. The ideal title length is 51-60 characters and only changes 39% to 42% of the time.
parentheses and brackets
Many sites use brackets and brackets to help page titles stand out, but Google is more likely to change your title if you use brackets. Search engines changed page titles with parentheses 77.6% of the time, and completely removed words between parentheses 32.9% of the time.
Brackets fared much better at 61.9%, on par with most titles, with only 19.7% of teams removing words between brackets.
title separator
Heading separators such as colons, pipes, and dashes are common ways to divide headings, but Google doesn’t like using pipes. The study showed that it replaced or eliminated plumbing in 41% of cases, but only removed dashes in 19.7% of cases.
Pipe replacement most commonly removes the pipe and replaces it with a dash.
other factors
Google is about information, so using too many keywords, the same title for multiple pages, and unnecessary brand names often causes Google to make changes.
Can you stop Google from making changes?
SEO experts and website owners often create specific page titles and want them to appear as-is, but there’s no guarantee Google won’t change it.in the most recent twitter thread, Google’s search advocate John Mueller said a mechanism to restrict Google from changing metadata is unlikely.
There is a light at the end of the metadata tunnel, though. H1 tags are an important ranking factor for Google, and matching the H1 to the title, even with the inclusion of common variable factors like plumbing, reduces the likelihood of a rewrite to 20.6%.
Featured Image: FP Creative/Shutterstock
