John Mueller: Title tags "not the most critical part of a page"

[martinibuster]

When asked what the most critical part of a web page is, he answered:

More like the actual content on the page.

Read it on SERoundtable, Title Tags Not Critical [seroundtable.com]

File this with the hashtag, #CrapJohnMuellerSays

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:41 pm (utc) on Jan 20, 2016]

[mrengine]

I won't make claims as to Google's rights but you did consent. Not consenting suggests not being indexed.

What utter nonsense. Allowing search engines to crawl and index is not the same as providing implied permission to rearrange or otherwise modify ones product. If anything, the search engine has a right to accept it as is or not.

[netmeg]

I'm not changing anything. My page titles accurately describe the pages, and that means sometimes they're really short and sometimes they're really long. Google changing them is an irritant, but since there's nothing I can do about it, not worth getting into a twist about it.

If anything, the search engine has a right to accept it as is or not.

I can link to a page on your site, and use the anchor text "click here" and describe your page any way I choose. Not much you can do about it. Google can do it too. Just on a much bigger scale.

[timemachined]

On the indexed page that G rewrote the title for, having removed the inbound anchor text and the on page anchor text, it is still the same rewritten title a week later. I can only assume it took it from the meta description as highlighted on search. Quite annoying really as I don't wish it to be rewritten, my content my bleeding rules!

Billion pound company thinks it can do whatever it wants with what we've written, steal parts to list under 10% copyright and say if you don't like it bar G bots. And we write what we feel to either make the title relevant or get a higher CTR, and they rewrite titles, despite searchers who have been online 15 years, using titles as a gauge of the content.

Sick and tired of them messing around. Fair enough take on page text and put it in meta keyword but don't muck about with the title. There should be an opt out for this, it's incredible. A whole engine based on stealing everybody's content and they do what they want.

You can tell they're tech based engineers, they don't even capitalise the auto rewrite, bunch of scruffy hippies!

[timemachined]

Netmeg a bit different when it comes to the primary search engine on the planet and CTR and them only doing this so searchers click on ads. Take this to the European Union court of self imposed rulers of Europe and they will slap G around the head for this. G has to tread a fine line as it could quite easily be a nationally controlled entity, much like anything that is vital to society, transport etc. i.e. G banned from the UK and so on or controlled by government.

Complain, I am. So now you have to pay to have the title you want to improve CTR, this has nothing to do with anything else but their advertising revenue. it stinks, bunch of hippies can't even capitalise! This is just the beginning, you either complain and see it dropped, or they roll it out and dial it up more so more and more are affected. Not happy.

[EditorialGuy]

can link to a page on your site, and use the anchor text "click here" and describe your page any way I choose. Not much you can do about it. Google can do it too. Just on a much bigger scale.

Exactly. A SERP is just a list of links. If I link to your site about dogs and your homepage title reads "The world's greatest pet site about dogs, puppies, mongrels, purebreds, dog food, leashes, collars, bones, rawhide toys, treats, breeding supplies, and other things canine," I'm not obligated to use that title as my anchor text. Neither is a search engine.

[Shaddows]

this has nothing to do with anything else but their advertising revenue

Hold on.

So your saying Google spends zillions of hours programming and billions on hardware. They employ thousands of datacentres to crawl, parse, categorise, score and index quadrillions of pages.

The track your user habits, your previous searches, your most recent searches.

They use this context to determine the precise mix of variables to return 10 results best suited to your query at this point in your life.

Then they REWRITE THE TITLE TO SCREW THE SITE OWNER because your will only prefer the ads?

Why not just return 10 semi-random pages with crap titles and save the billions in hardware and software development?

[Selen]

I noticed confusing keywords added to titles, for example 'Home page' (added to an internal page) or domain at the end of the modified title.

[EditorialGuy]

More food for thought:

When writing titles, you should think like an editor or an advertising copywriter--not like an SEO. Focus on clickthroughs, not rankings, and remember that searchers are scanning SERPs, not reading them at leisure..

(Side note: I've never seen Google rewrite any of my titles except for appending my site name when I've failed to include it. If Google is constantly rewriting your titles, you might want to give as much thought to what's wrong with your titles as you do to what's wrong with Google.)

[Selen]

except for appending my site name when I've failed to include it.

There is no need to include site name in page title unless it's home page or unless your goal is to spam search engines with your best set of keywords.

[timemachined]

Exactly, only the uninformed includes site title in wordpress settings these days and if G is adding site title now, that would be incredible.

And for Shaddows "Why not just return 10 semi-random pages with crap titles and save the billions in hardware and software development?"

Well, it's all about the advertising but they have to keep it usable or people would all leave and go elsewhere. So yes, they do all they can do to get the ad clicks while still keeping results relevant.

It's one thing rewriting a page title but which twit google can't capitalise the first letter of a word? google google google, Erm Google!

Every page I see a title of mine rewritten will be removed from the index and reindexed. If google wants to play games, let them commence.

[netmeg]

If you think that's the best use of your time, then go for it. I don't think it'll make a *huge* dent in Google, but hope springs eternal.

[timemachined]

For my benefit, not Google. They rewrote, removing two words I put in front to differentiate my listing from all the others.

So instead of

Blue Widget
Blue Widget
Blue Widget
Two Words Blue Widget
Blue Widget
Blue Widget
Blue Widget
Blue Widget
Blue Widget
Blue Widget

now the list is all the same, barring ugly non capitalised first letters of words in mine.

So now I have to waste my time, removing the page completely, readding it as a new and hoping it goes in on first page again all because G is mucking around with me. Why is this not manageable in Webmaster tools? Why is my listing edited and no other, why can I not correct the issue and be informed how to? Annoying!

Seriously, put John Mueller in a grave and be done with it.

[timemachined]

You can dig John back up, having done the following in order, it's reverted

1) removed on page keyword anchor text - no change
2) removed internal link anchor text - no change after fetch only moved back up

having waited a few days, just fetched again

3) fetch again after a few days and title rewrite overwritten with original meta title

No rewrite of title and goes back to original title meta, Saga over, still aint right to rewrite

[The Shower Scene]

Your content is free. You gave it away. You have no right (at least in America) to cry-babying about it. I almost choked on my sausage!

Google is using their God given editorial powers. Those editorial powers are handed down by God himself to all sentient humans and corporations. Those editorial powers are personally guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Google can frame every page of your content so that it looks like it's coming out of the rear end of a donkey [larryflynt.hustlercom.net] if it wants to and there is nothing you, the Ayatollah or Saddam Hussein can do about it.

Just relax. Look at me. I'm basking in my God given rights as an American. You should too. But you owe me a sausage.

[timemachined]

Copyright law is restricted to 10% and still should be referenced. G doesn't break that local law. Title rewriting should not be pursued by G.

As for frames, can stop that too with a break out script (smiley)

As for John's comment, not the most critical part of a page but probably critical in most people's eyes when it comes to search and interaction with a user.

[EditorialGuy]

There is no need to include site name in page title unless it's home page or unless your goal is to spam search engines with your best set of keywords.

Actually, there's a good reason for including your site name. It's called "branding."

[timemachined]

It appears some of you are correct, my local library believes that if G is doing it then it must be the way forward. They are renaming all books as they please.

Alice's Adventure in Wonderland will now be known as Trippy little girl on drugs - note no capitalisation

and

Toad of Toad Hall is known as Ratty's rich annoying fat frog friend

It's also been in the local news that the NRA have contacted the library to get the American Constitution changed to 'Document that states guns are good' because the amount of inbound references refer to the American Constitution being gun related the most.

Hey, if it works for the big G!

[fathom]

What utter nonsense. Allowing search engines to crawl and index is not the same as providing implied permission to rearrange or otherwise modify ones product. If anything, the search engine has a right to accept it as is or not.

Not that I disagree... Where does this happen?

Not in these:
Blogger/Blogspot
Google+
Web Search
Google Adwords
Drive and Docs
Google Play - Music
Google Play - Apps
Google Shopping
Image Search
Google Photos and Picasa Web Albums
YouTube

Not even in Knowledge Graph which is limited to specific sources.

More than happy to concede the point but what precisely is that point?

[edited by: fathom at 6:59 pm (utc) on Jan 22, 2016]

[EditorialGuy]

It appears some of you are correct, my local library believes that if G is doing it then it must be the way forward. They are renaming all books as they please.

But Google isn't renaming books.

(Satire works only when it's based in reality.)

[timemachined]

Yes but the phrases are 'title of a book' and 'title of a page'. I don't know why you're defending google, what they are doing is abhorrent. That's your definition of satire, whereas I was merely taking the pi.. proverbial.

[fathom]

However, this meta information is provided by the author of the page with the intention of displaying it to their users.

That really isn't true ... You're stating your USERS make 1.2 trillion searches/year?

You're claiming Google's searchers are in fact yours not Google's.

[timemachined]

Yes but unless Google plans on changing their business model to just driverless cars, they need our websites to be indexed and their bots not banned. A symbiont relationship that requires respect. And as you referenced that comment, as whole works go, content does indeed count the html too as that's exactly what G reads as well, not the page as text. They should leave titles well alone.

[Selen]

It's called "branding."

Spammers and shady SEOs call keyword stuffing "branding," too. User isn't interested in your attempts to "brand" your site by adding unrelated keywords to the title; they are interested in a precise and adequate title that reflects the content of the page. On the Internet, a "brand" is your domain name (which is already prominently branded as green text in search results).

[FranticFish]

Whatever John Mueller says, and whatever the truth is, I wish Google would pay a little more attention to title tags (and content for that matter). In the niche I've been looking at lately their results are, er, interesting. This is an example of what I've seen whilst searching for vehicles locally in the UK:

Search for: '[vehicle name] for sale [location] - page optimised for 'used [vehicle name] for sale in [location]' is in results.
Search for: 'used [vehicle name] for sale [location] - page about the used vehicle is gone, but half the results on page one have title tags like 'new [vehicle name] location'
Search for: 'new [vehicle name] for sale [location] - half the pages have used vehicles on them and some have the word 'used' in their title tag

Autos is a major niche. This isn't some wierd corner case. This is a proper f*ck up and something that would have been inconceivable 7-8 years ago. I've just not seen a SERP this messed up until now. Forget my aspirations (yes I'm bitter right now, but I'll try to figure it out), this is just bad UE. The modifier word here is CRUCIAL but - hey, f*ck it - it's just a word and is clearly weighted no differently than any other word in the search phrase. Sure showed those naughty keyword spammers didn't you? Oh, and host crowding makes it worse too. Yey!

[EditorialGuy]

Spammers and shady SEOs call keyword stuffing "branding," too. User isn't interested in your attempts to "brand" your site by adding unrelated keywords to the title;

Who said anything about "adding unrelated keywords to the title"?

Stop obsessing about keywords. Titles aren't about keywords (they never were, except to SEOs).

[mrengine]

Google changing them is an irritant, but since there's nothing I can do about it, not worth getting into a twist about it.

It's beyond an irritant, it is simply wrong. Today its titles and tomorrow its content. What we post on the web is not for Google to use as they deem most profitable for them. In fact, one could argue that distorting our titles in their search results contributes to Google zombie traffic that wastes our server resources and bandwidth.

[The Shower Scene]

...they need our websites to be indexed and their bots not banned.

You overestimate the value of your website.

A symbiont relationship that requires respect.

What does a lady's pleasuring machine have to do with your relationship with Google? Your jumping off a short limb without a safety net and you still owe me a sausage.

[timemachined]

Shower, the value of my website to google is nil, the same for yours, the value of all the websites indexed is equal to that of all the existing shareholders.

symbiont
ˈsɪmbɪɒnt,-bʌɪ-/
noun
noun: symbiont; plural noun: symbionts

an organism living in symbiosis with another.

Without websites, google search dies, without google, we still have other search engines and marketing means that cost a tad more.

Franticfish, yes, same in other topical results too, probably a case of ALL. Time will tell if users leave or learn to use quotation marks. But with most of the internet users dumb and with ADD, G should do a drop down box for them to choose. I think they used to or another engine did.

[lucy24]

symbiont
ˈsɪmbɪɒnt,-bʌɪ-/

Doesn't work. WebmasterWorld has made the conscious choice to (a) stick with 8859-1 encoding and (b) to expand all & (ampersand) in page source to & so the browser doesn't even have the option of displaying encoded characters. But that's a different thread.

Including the site name in page titles may be the textbook case of something that makes a page less useful for human visitors. If the site name is first, then any user with multiple tabs open can no longer tell which of your pages is which*; all there's room for is the site name. (How often are you comparing different sites' versions of an otherwise identical thing? That's the only time the sitename is more useful than the rest of the page.)

In any case there is no earthly reason for a search engine to append a sitename to a page title; the site's name is already right there in the visible link.


* I used to do stuff for a site whose preferred title format included thirty-one non-unique characters before you got to the individual unique part. And I spent a lot of time in tabs.

[EditorialGuy]

How often are you comparing different sites' versions of an otherwise identical thing? That's the only time the sitename is more useful than the rest of the page.

Quite often, as a matter of fact. In a search on, say, "St. Cuthbert of Widgetonia," seeing a result that says "St. Cuthbert of Widgetonia - Saintpedia" is helpful if I've used Saintpedia and find it to be a useful resource.

In any case there is no earthly reason for a search engine to append a sitename to a page title; the site's name is already right there in the visible link.

Yes, but having the site's name telegraphed instantly by the title is more convenient than having to look at both the title and the URL.

I think we need to remember that Google does a great deal of usability testing, and if Google is rewriting page titles or appending site names in some instances, that's probably because testing has showed that users are pleased with the results.