Titlepocalypse Update
Last
Month we reported on Google's new system of generating titles for about 20% of web pages in the search results. Suffice it to say there was a bit of an outrage over the issue. Some were wondering if Google had prematurely rolled out something they hadn't thoroughly tested.
According to Google's newly released documentation titled, More information on how Google generates titles for web page results...
Thanks to your feedback, which has been much appreciated, we've further refined our titles system.
Additional guidance for creators;
Title elements are used the most – Google's new system uses your HTML title element (i.e., title tag) as the title they show in the search results for the vast majority of web page results — approximately 87% of the time, revised upward from the previous 80%.
Google points out that, since 2012, they've used text beyond title elements in cases where their systems determine the title element might not describe a page as well as it could — pages with empty title tags, duplicate titles on every page regardless of page content, or no title elements at all.
