Google is found to be changing 62 per cent of its title tags

After research by Cyrus Shepherd (Zyppy) it has been discovered that the search engine Google is rewriting 61.6 per cent of its title tags. In total, the researcher analysed 80,959 of the title tags on 2,370 sites from different countries. The original title tags were compared with Google’s search results on desktops.

The results roughly confirmed earlier testing by Moz (58 percent of rewrites) and Alexis Rylko (40 percent), although they used a slightly different methodology.

Of course, most of the rewrites are minimal (but there are some very serious ones), nevertheless 62 per cent is a huge number.

After analysing the results, Shepard identified frequent scenarios in which Google is highly likely to start rewriting such tags:

• Length deviations: the presence of overly short or long tags.
• Repeated use of the same keyword.
• Delimiters are used: hyphens “-” or vertical dashes “|”.
• Titles have either round () or square [] brackets.
• The presence of template text which is used in several tags.
• The brand name is missing or has an unnecessarily long name.

The top 3 scenarios in which Google changes the tag title relate to length, brackets and separators.

The effect of the length of the title on the change

On desktop devices, the search engine typically makes the limit of the title title tag a 650-pixel limit (on smartphones and tablets, this number is slightly higher). Titles that are too long are in most cases shortened by triplets “…”.

In addition to this Google also rewrites the tags which are too short. As it turned out, the search engine is not satisfied with 95 percent of the title tags, differing from the average length in one direction or another.

Shortened tags of one to five characters, such as “Man” or “Nike” were rewritten in 97 per cent of cases, usually with the addition of additional words or data. In any case, every title that has no more than twenty characters is fifty per cent likely to be rewritten.

As for long titles with over seventy characters, there is almost a hundred percent probability that they will be rewritten. Each title with more than sixty characters is likely to be rewritten with 76 percent probability.

Optimal length of this parameter is 51-60 signs. But they will also be rewritten, although only in 39-42 per cent of cases.

What should you do so that the tag title title is not replaced by H1

It’s no secret that Google is now paying attention to a number of other HTML elements when it creates page titles. It’s all about the header in the first place. If used strategically, H1 should reduce the percentage of rewritten titles on your web site.

Suppose, if the webmaster applied a vertical bar as a separator, the search engine rewrite title tags with a probability of 41 percent. But if a vertical bar is added to the H1 tag as well, the risk of changes will be reduced by exactly half.

So, to significantly reduce the risk of search engine changes, duplicate the title in H1.