Google says it is not filtering sites for bad page titles, but it will write something better if what’s provided isn’t relevant enough.
There is a recurring fear in SEO that somewhere inside Google there is a quiet “filter” that decides a site has bad titles and then stops taking it seriously. Google has said that is not how it works.
What we do need to be clear about is that the title shown in Google results is not always the same thing as the <title> on the page, and changing our <title> does not guarantee the search result will update in the way we expect. That might sound like a minor technicality, but it has practical consequences for anyone who has ever updated a set of page titles and then wondered why Google appears to be ignoring the changes.
Google is not running a “we don’t like this site” switch based on titles. If our title work is not showing up, it won’t be a punitive filter. It is more likely that Google is choosing a different title link for the result. Google has stated that title links in search are generated automatically using multiple sources, “including the <title> element” but also from headings, prominent on-page text, and text in links pointing to the page.
Trust me, this is a good thing. I used to be furious when my pages were beaten in the search results by pages whose displayed titles were all in capitals, or full of exclamation marks or other symbols. So I’m all for page titles being rewritten.
Google aims to show a title link that best represents the result, and it will rewrite titles when it thinks the on-page title element is not descriptive, is duplicated or is otherwise unhelpful. So here are the rules to bear in mind:
- Make the <title> descriptive and specific;
- Make the main on-page heading align with it;
- Make internal links describe the destination clearly;
- Avoid boilerplate titles that could apply to ten different pages.
Also remember that it may take time to recrawl and reprocess title sources, and that can be days to weeks, depending on the site and the changes.