Google came up with a new system for the generation of links about Google title changes recently. It is because the new system produces comparatively better titles for documents specifying the overall description of the searched query.
But during the initial days of the new system, SEO executives failed to explain the description of the page by suggesting one after the other examples of the title. This confused the users a lot and dissuaded them from clicking on the links further. But with time and sincere developments, the situation has now improved. But still, trusting the new system of Google with your content blindly can hamper your business.
Let us go through Google title changes evolution and what you can do to verify your titles and gain control over them again.
A tale of two title changes: Then vs. Now
Title links adjustments are something that Google has been doing for a long time now. In the year 2014, the company came up with an explanation that it might change the titles of the searches to match up with the query in some cases. This justification of Google seemed misleading to some SEO executives because, at a later point in time, Google would eventually use these practices as precedents for its new system. There was a contrast in the magnitude and impact of the changes.
An example of the new system’s impact is in the form of worst rewrites of big sites with large scalability that has improved now. Various other SEO executives also experienced the same regarding a few articles.
The first weeks of the title change rollout
At the time of the rollout of the new title change in August, various SEO executives went to Twitter to highlight the issue of poorly rewritten titles in searches. Some of the titles overwritten made sense and were necessarily making a positive effect on the performance. But many titles overwrites were amiss.
SEO executives began fearing the inaccuracy of the rewritten titles than that in the title tags. However, the changes in the title do not affect the rankings. But the title can impact the clickthrough rates, which can affect the business KPIs like revenue generation. The careless rolling out of title changes by Google stimulated a movement among some SEO executives demanding a way to opt-out of the title changes. Many experts have also highlighted this issue, saying that they hate this new system and want Google to use the page title that they give it.
On this, Google gave an argument stating that the page titles have to be creative to attract users, especially in cases where users failed to provide creative titles. To which expert failed to provide creative titles. To which experts argued that Google should provide site owners with meta tags like ‘yes, I’m sure’ to confirm that they willingly want their page titles to use.”
The nature of Google’s title rewrites
Google was cutting down on some headlines in a way that it was completely changing the meaning of the title. In some cases, the punctuations were breaking the title at an early stage. In the rarest cases, it was also seen that title search results displayed in the form of keywords or anchor texts that was out of the context and presented the content of the page poorly. Google removed the pipe character in the search results and displayed any header tags.
But since then, Google has improved and made changes in its new system for rewriting the title searches.
Google has improved since its title rewrites
After the post of Danny Sullivan, Google made a post to explain the reason behind the changes in the title. More documents on the title control and description in the search were also published. After this explanation by Google, a change in the title algorithm was also noticed.
A result to which was that people shared feedbacks to Google, acknowledging that Google has made improvements to title overwrites.
What to do if you suspect Google is changing your titles?
If any change in the CTRs, investigate if there are any changes to your title link. SEO executives provide many ways to do this. Let us discuss a few of them below.
Firstly we will need a way to track titles. Collect some popular searches to your site and then gather Google SERPs titles now compare them to the actual title.
The “SERP titles” button helps in exporting the data for analysis purposes. An important thing to keep in mind while exporting the data is rearranging the grouping of the rows to the top pages by seeing the traffic on the title link.
What can you do if you’re unhappy with how Google changed your titles?
Not all titles are satisfactory ones. Some can be less informative than the original titles. What you can do is craft more informative titles and avoid bad rewrites by Google.
Also, you can submit feedback for any inappropriate topic. Follow a scientific approach from the hypothesis to deriving a conclusion and eventually find out why an algorithm is replacing your title. In this way, you will be able to detect what works for the business, what your audience wants, and what is it with Google algorithms.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
For SEO executives
Today we use SEO executives for better results, but titles are one of the oldest forms of on-SERP SEO. With improvement in the new system title links, SEO executives will have a double check to their titles. To ensure that they follow the guidance of Google to showcase to users what we intend them to see instead of inferior titles highlighted from the keywords used.
For the industry
We know that we, as digital marketing services providers rely on Google for traffic generation and vice versa. Google relies on us for content to present it to the users. It’s a two-way thing. When the new system regarding title changes rolled out, it had its share of technical glitches, but with time it improved and gained users’ satisfaction and will continue to do so for the growth of our businesses and delivery of better content to the audience.