Tired of Google changing your title tags ? I feel you! We spend time tweaking our page titles to optimize our SEO and improve clinics email list click-through rates? and all that work gets thrown away by Google. How frustrating!
However? there are good reasons why the leading search engine should do this! Called Titlegate? the massive rewriting of titles displayed in the SERP aims to provide better consistency between the promise made by Google and the content offered by the website.
Considered a hot area for SEO ? the page title influences not only SEO? but also the click-through rate ( businesses have lost up to 50% of their traffic! ).
I therefore invite you to discover this complete file on the affair of the reformulations of titles by Google and offer you 8 tips to remedy it !
Quick read: what you’ll learn about Titlegate
In this comprehensive file on Titlegate ? you will discover the following elements:
- the percentage of title tags rewritten by Google?
- Google’s reasons and how they reformulate a title?
- the impact of Titlegate on natural referencing?
- 8 tips to avoid rewriting your title tags.
To learn why and how to optimize your title tags? just read on!
Titlegate: 61% of title tags are rewritten by Google
The 2022 study by Zyppy [1] (updated June 2023) showed that 61% of titles displayed in the SERP are rewritten by Google . To ensure a consistent result? they be careful with mass emails for corporations analyzed no less than 80?959 title tags from 2?370 websites worldwide.
To conduct this survey ? Zyppy based its findings on a previous study conducted by Dr. Pete J. Meyers (marketing researcher at Moz) and research conducted by Alexis Rylko [3] (SEO technical director at IProspect). The former found a rewording rate of 83%? while the latter? based solely on major rewrites? obtained a result of 40%.
Furthermore? all of these researchers seem to agree on one point: the titles displayed in the SERP can vary depending on the query and the device used . Other factors? certainly such as search history or location? could also influence the title chosen by Google.
However? in the study conducted by Zyppy? 3 main factors for rewriting title tags were identified:
- the length of the titles?
- the use of brackets instead of parentheses?
- the influence of the choice of separators
Other factors also appear to motivate Google to chine directory change the SEO titles displayed in the SERP. But before I explain all of these factors? I suggest you understand how Google chooses the titles offered in the search engine results pages.
How does Google generate the titles displayed in the SERP?
On September 17? 2021? Google published crucial information on its blog regarding the generation of titles displayed in the results [4] . Surprisingly? the Mountain View Giant announces figures that are largely different from those announced in the searches. Indeed? according to them? 87% of the titles displayed correspond to an HTML tag (title? H1 or H2).
