Title Tags Can Be Changed by Google?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis ShareThis

Here’s an incentive for writing good page titles. Google reserves the right to do it for you!

Of course, Google has said all along that it may use different texts for use as snippets to show users in the SERPs. They won’t always use your meta description tag. Google has been known to use descriptions from the Open Directory Project also known as the DMOZ directory. In other cases, the search engine has snagged text from on page and overridden the meta description tag. Now, Google is saying it could use other tactics similar to these for displaying a page title to searchers.

Here is a recent video by Google’s Matt Cutts that examples this Title Tag topic:

If you find that your page titles have been changed in the SERPs, look to see where your titles may be weak and work to improve them. Google shouldn’t change page titles that are descriptive, tell searchers what to expect, and that provide a good idea of what is on your page.

November 13, 2009
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4 Comments
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4 Responses to “Title Tags Can Be Changed by Google?”

Larry Brauner says:

November 13, 2009 at 9:43 am

I like your advice. I once changed my title to try and capture new keywords, and my traffic went down.

I checked my position for my main keywords. No change. That told me that my clickthrough rate had dropped. Searchers for my main keywords didn’t find my new title relevant and compelling. I changed my title back, and my traffic rebounded.

For me, this underscored the importance of balancing objectives in title selection: optimize for keywords and optimize for appeal to the target audience.

It’s a worthwhile exercise to test variations in title to see which variation yields the greatest traffic and/or conversions.
Nick Stamoulis says:

November 13, 2009 at 11:10 am

Hi Larry,
Thanks for the comment…best of luck with the testing!
Chris McElroy says:

December 17, 2009 at 4:50 pm

Another way of taking advantage of Google Snippets and changes they are making is building blocks.

What I mean by that is creating a page that for instance has 4 services to sell and where you want to rank for those four key phrases.

You use whatever your main key phrase is in your top h1 tag, then you use each of the others as a title with an h2 tag and a block of text that not only describes what you want to say there, but also so the first sentence in that block of text be something you would want as a description in the search engine ranking page.
Nick Stamoulis says:

December 17, 2009 at 5:57 pm

Hi Chris,
This is solid advice! Thanks for the comment and stopping by