Basics of SEO Optimization: What to Do When Google Frequently Modifies Website Titles

Recently, many clients have complained to Arachne Group Limited: Google frequently modifies webpage titles in search results, significantly impacting website traffic...

In fact, Google has previously changed page titles for certain reasons, but in the vast majority of cases, it directly used the content from the Title Tag. However, in August 2021, Google suddenly announced a major update—the "Title Generation Mechanism." It stated that while Google would still consider Title Tag content as a crucial reference for displayed titles, it would also place greater emphasis on content from other elements on the webpage, such as H-tags, body content, and internal relevance.

Why did Google suddenly introduce the "Title Generation Mechanism"?

According to Google's official statement, while directly using Title Tag content for search result page titles was more convenient operationally, it often led to the following criticized issues:

▪ Empty tag content or tags containing only text irrelevant to the webpage content.

▪ Some websites, in an attempt to boost keyword rankings and relevance, cram multiple related keywords into the title, resulting in excessively long titles.

▪ Similarly, to improve rankings and relevance, some websites employ even more clumsy SEO tactics, directly stuffing meaningless, repeated keywords into the title, misleading search engines into thinking the site is highly relevant to user search terms.

It is worth noting that regardless of the SEO tactic used to create Title Tags, the ultimate result is—searchers cannot quickly and preliminarily judge the webpage's main purpose or what valuable information it contains when seeing such titles, thereby significantly degrading the Google search experience.

To provide a better search experience and ensure searchers can find the information they want in the shortest time possible from search results, Google decided to introduce the "Title Generation Mechanism."

What impact does the "Title Generation Mechanism" have on website SEO?

Judging from the above, Google's original intention behind this mechanism is undoubtedly good. However, during SEO operations, it has led to many laughable situations, such as:

① Titles being partially truncated, forming nonsensical sentences.

The original title for the "Mississippi River Cruises" page on the American Cruise Lines website was "Mississippi River Cruises on the Legendary Mississippi River - American Cruise Lines." However, because the title was truncated in search results, it ended up as the incomplete phrase "on the legendary Mississippi River."

② Directly extracting sentences from H-tags, body content, etc., to use as titles, resulting in mismatched content.

For the "Long-term Care Facilities" page on the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) website, the search engine directly extracted the sentence "and assisted living" from the body to use as the title, making it completely unclear what the webpage intended to convey. Additionally, Google displayed the title for the Mosquito page on the CDC site as "Mosquitoes Home-CDC," leading searchers to mistakenly think it was a mosquito breeding or research center.

The above examples are at most harmless "jokes," but some webpages have seen their SEO performance directly affected due to title rewrites.

For instance, a Boston advertising agency experienced a 21% drop in click-through rate (CTR) for its long-time top-ranking page "Free Keyword Tool" for the keyword "Free Keyword Research Tool" due to Google's "Title Generation Mechanism." The CTR drop for other related keywords was as high as 37%. This significant loss was ultimately because Google changed the title of the "Free Keyword Tool" page to "Learn More About The FREE Keyword Tool."

What to Do When Website Titles Are Frequently Modified by Google? Focus on the Official SEO Guidelines.

In the past, we racked our brains to write Title Tags that complied with SEO rules, hoping to significantly increase website click-through rates and bring more substantial profits to the brand. However, previously common SEO strategies have now greatly reduced our control over our own webpage titles. What can we do to ensure website traffic?

In fact, when introducing this mechanism, Google also updated its official SEO guidelines. Business owners can minimize the risk of "title modifications" by paying close attention to the following points before creating Title Tags:

● Ensure each page on the website has a Title Tag corresponding to its content.

● Ensure the uniqueness of each page title; avoid using templated titles or having duplicate Title Tags as much as possible.

● Titles should be concise; it is recommended to keep them within approximately 60 characters / 30 Chinese characters.

● Avoid stuffing keywords into titles; not only is it ineffective for SEO, but it may also lead Google to mistakenly identify the page as spam.

Furthermore, in these SEO guidelines, Google also pointed out the reference elements it uses for generating titles and common pitfalls for businesses when creating titles:

【Reference Elements for Google's Title Generation】

For webpage titles displayed in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP), about 80% still directly use the Title Tag. Therefore, setting a high-quality, descriptive title tag remains very important in SEO. The remaining approximately 20% of titles are selected from the following content:

• The main visual heading on the page

• Other heading elements, such as H-tags

• Key content deliberately emphasized visually on the webpage

• Anchor text within the page

• Anchor text from backlinks

• Text content within the webpage

• ...

【Common Pitfalls to Note When Creating Titles】

— Incomplete or truncated titles.

For example, a page title like "| ×××××" might lead Google to assume there is content before the "|", treating it as a title with missing text.

— Content corresponding to a specific year is updated annually under the same URL, but the title does not match the year.

Taking a university website as an example, the prospectus page URL is almost the same every year, but the page content is replaced with that year's prospectus. If the webpage contains the 2022 prospectus but the title is "2021 ××××× University Prospectus," Google might detect this and change the title to the correct year.

— Imprecise titles that vaguely describe webpage content.

For example, a page title like "Giant Plush Toys, Teddy Bears, Koalas, Platypus – Cute Toy Store" might prevent searchers from immediately knowing which specific toys the page sells. Consequently, Google might extract parts to form a more suitable title like "Giant Plush Toys – Cute Toy Store."

— Templated titles.

This is especially common on series platforms, novel platforms, etc. If each season of a series has a different page but the same title, Google might detect this as duplication and add season numbers, e.g., "××××× Season 1", "××××× Season 2", "××××× Season 3"...

From the current situation, even if we follow Google's official recommendations for creating website SEO titles 100%, it does not guarantee titles won't be altered by the algorithm. However, we still need to write titles following the official guidelines. Simultaneously, based on Google's reference elements for title generation, we must ensure the relevance of key elements within the page to reduce the impact caused by "mismatched content."

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