Write titles search engines keep

How to do it

Google writes its own title link when it finds a problem with the <title>. The problems it lists are half-empty, outdated or inaccurate titles, and repeated boilerplate. Others are a page with no clear main title, the wrong language, and the site name repeated. It builds the replacement from the h1, og:title, large text on the page and the text of links pointing at the page. The closer these agree with the title, the more likely yours stays. Put a year in a title only when the content is updated for that year. The format and length live in Give every page its own title.

Examples

JavaScript example

const name = page.title.replace(/\s*·\s*Example$/, '');
const agree = (a, b) => a.toLowerCase().includes(b.toLowerCase()) || b.toLowerCase().includes(a.toLowerCase());
assert.ok(agree(name, page.h1) && agree(name, page.ogTitle), `${page.path}: title, h1 and og:title disagree`);
assert.equal(page.title.split('Example').length - 1, 1, `${page.path}: site name must appear once`);

Python example

name = re.sub(r"\s*·\s*Example$", "", page.title)
agree = lambda a, b: a.lower() in b.lower() or b.lower() in a.lower()
assert agree(name, page.h1) and agree(name, page.og_title), f"{page.path}: title, h1 and og:title disagree"
assert page.title.count("Example") == 1, f"{page.path}: site name must appear once"

How to check

A build test strips the site name from each title and compares the rest with the page's h1 and og:title. They are equal, or one contains the other, and the site name appears in the title exactly once.

Sources

• Google Search Central – Influencing title links

Related rules

• WEB-6 Give every page its own title in Website
• SEO-69 Rewrite titles that are seen but rarely clicked in SEO