Have you recently experienced that Google no longer displays your normal page titles (meta titles)? Since August 16, 2021, Google has rolled out an update that in many cases/searches takes content from your page instead of displaying your self-written meta titles.
In most of these cases, Google will use the H1 tag, but in some cases they choose to use H2 tags, other content from the page, or anchor text from inbound links. Google chooses what they think is most relevant to the page and the search query in question.
Google itself has officially confirmed the update (read more here).
Why does Google rewrite your meta titles?
The meta title has for many years been one of the most effective single-factor optimizations that can be made to achieve better rankings in search engines. This also means that many have used this to include unnatural phrases and words to achieve better rankings. At the same time, the meta title is used to increase CTR and thus also achieve better rankings in the organic results.
Over the years, this has created meta titles in the SERP that do not necessarily benefit the user who needs to find the most relevant result.
Google itself states:
“Last week, we introduced a new system of generating titles for web pages. Before this, titles might change based on the query issued. This generally will no longer happen with our new system. This is because we think our new system is producing titles that work better for documents overall, to describe what they are about, regardless of the particular query.”
In other words, Google believes that their index is filled with bad meta titles for the following primary reasons:
- Too long meta titles
- Titles with too many keywords / unnatural phrases to achieve better rankings in search engines (keyword stuffing)
- Meta titles with technical errors. For example, front pages called “Home” or just the name of the page
- Missing entered meta titles
Example:
Here is an example of the search “Car loan”. In the above result we get the meta title “Get one of the cheapest car loans on the market – Coop Bank”
As shown below, this is not the meta title that Coop Bank has entered:
The user does not need to go through the entire form, as information after each step is automatically updated on their Klaviyo profile.
The function can primarily be used for:
If you look at the relevant page, Google has chosen to display the H1 tag from the page instead of an actual meta title:
Is your page affected by meta title rewriting?
Google itself has stated that this will have a positive impact, as your previously unoptimized pages will now have a relevant meta title, which will increase CTR and thus improve rankings. We can partly follow this line of thinking, but it can also have a major negative impact on your highly ranked pages with good and well-crafted meta titles.
You may experience a drop in CTR, and thus rankings/visits, if Google chooses to rewrite these pages. Our clear recommendation is to keep a close eye on your CTR numbers during these months to see the effect on your highly prioritized and ranking pages.
At the time of writing, we have not yet experienced significant drops in CTR.
What can you do with your meta titles yourself?
You can’t decide for yourself whether Google chooses to display your entered meta title or one of their rewritten ones. However, there are some factors that you can optimize to reduce the “risk”.
- Make sure your meta titles adhere to the maximum length
- Avoid over-optimizing your titles with keywords (keyword stuffing)
- Make sure they are well-written and appetizing.
- Make sure your meta titles are unique
In this way, you have done your part to ensure that Google chooses to display the correct title and not their rewritten one.
The above still won’t guarantee that Google will choose to display your meta title. Therefore, it’s important that you optimize your page as best as possible so that Google will display relevant titles in the SERP if they were to rewrite your titles. Here’s how to do it:
- Make sure to tag your titles correctly with H1 and H2 tags
- Make sure your H1 and H2 tags make sense to the user in any meta title
- Make sure your H1 tag contains your primary keyword
- Try to make sure your inbound link anchor texts are relevant to the page content
Do you still need to write meta titles?
Although it sounds tempting not to have to spend time writing meta titles, the clear recommendation is still to spend time writing good, unique meta titles.
Danny Sullivan himself states: ”Our main advice on that page to site owners remains the same. Focus on creating great HTML title tags.”
At the same time, he states that Google will continue to use 80% of the titles. This means that at present only 20% will be rewritten.
There are no statements or trends that indicate that Google no longer uses the data in your meta titles to rank search results, even if they are rewritten. Therefore, you should not expect the work to be wasted and the value to be devalued, even if your titles are rewritten.
