Google has updated the Search Center Guidelines to control how search title tags are displayed. The update didn’t change the instructions themselves, but it simplified them considerably and removed many of the ambiguities in wording that made them difficult to understand.

Google is changing title tags

Title tags are descriptive elements that describe what a web page is about. They are also ranking factors.

For this reason, many advertisers use the title tag to indicate the key phrases they want to be associated with a web page.

Google displays title tags on search results pages (SERPs), which makes it even more important to use key phrases in title tags.

Google rewrites title tags over the years if its algorithms learn more descriptive text than the advertiser provided.

The Title tag rewriting feature Search results spiked in the summer of 2021, causing concern in the search advertising and marketing communities. Many people have reported a drop in search traffic attributed to Google after rewriting their title tags.

A study suggests that more than Rewritten title tags show up in 61% of search results.

Changes to the header tag line

On October 8, 2021, Google published unique guidelines for controlling title tags, Control topic links in search results (Here’s a screenshot of the Archive.org original instructions)

Updated title tag changes explain what you mean when you use the word “title. “

say “titleThis is not obvious because the title is at the top of the web page or a reference to the HTML heading element (H1, H2, H3).

As it turns out, the original version of the tutorial used the word “”.title“See the title at the top of the web page and as a reference to the HTML heading element (H1, H2, H3, etc.).

Although the title at the top of the page is usually the title element, the new version of the tutorial is more accurate, as shown below.

Here is the original version:

“Title Clarification Main Title of Page.”

This is an updated version of the instructions:

“The description of the text is the main topic of the page.”

This is an excerpt from the following sentence from the source:

“…and having the same display and key weight across multiple titles can be confusing.”

The new version explained:

“…and having the same display and key weight across multiple titles can be confusing.”

The original version of the updated third sentence:

“Make sure your title stands out from the rest of the text on the page and is very prominent on the page (for example, by using a large font and placing the title within the element

An updated version of the same sentence:

“Make sure your title is distinct from the rest of the text on the page and stands out as the most prominent owner of the page (eg use a large font, place the title text within the element.

As you can see, the description makes a huge difference in making the tutorial’s purpose easy to understand.

The last change is in a section that describes what Google uses to determine the syntax in a title link to display in search results.

The proof is this:

“display title or title on page”

Updated version:

“Main Display Address Displayed on Page”

Google address tag guidelines have been clarified, but not updated

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the training itself has not changed. What has changed is that the document is now significantly less ambiguous and less comprehensible.

Read the new title tag guidelines here:

Control topic links in search results

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