Notice how we use a different headline for each.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nAs you can see in the screenshot above, there\u2019s also a tag<\/strong> to optimize for Twitter. If none of these are used, your < title > will be used.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s very useful because it allows you to be versatile with your headlines and optimize for SEO and social media at the same time. But more on that later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, onto the study \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To sum this part up \u2026<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n< title > tag is the HTML title of your page.<\/li>\n\n\n\n Its purpose is to be used by software like browsers or search engines<\/li>\n\n\n\n Google looks at your tag as an important SEO signal<\/li>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also what comes up in the search results \nTherefore you want it to be optimized for both SEO and clicks<\/li>\n\n\n\n If Google thinks your title sucks, it will replace it and then you\u2019re screwed<\/li>\n\n\n\n Luckily, you can create separate titles for social media platforms<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nWe took 15,000 long-tail keywords with a 1,000 – 12,000 searches a month and obtained the top 100 organic results for each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We crawled each URL to get the < title > tag and < h > tags, and then we crawled a Google to get the actual Google title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally we pulled some metrics like traffic, CPC, backlinks, etc. from Ahrefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s a look at the < title > tags in database: <\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nAs you can see, Google is right in that there\u2019s a heap of pages with useless titles, or no titles at all. \nI wanted to point that out because it relates to one of our next points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. Google Does a Lot of Editing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n As you can see in the chart below, a huge number of titles are either changed or truncated in Google search results<\/b>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nWe compared lowercase strings and ignored small differences that can be assigned to encoding, like hyphens vs. dashes. Yet, we still ended up seeing some 50% figures<\/b>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is understandable as there\u2019s a great variety in how people write titles and, naturally, Google wants to show clean and user-friendly results.<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nLikewise, most \u201crewriting\u201d cases are simply Google providing more context or truncating titles that are too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A lot of that sort of editing is query dependent<\/b>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nWhen I manually reviewed the original and edited titles, it mostly seems that Google uses a very simple algorithm<\/b>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most changes fall in one of the following categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nGoogle adds a source e.g. title – The Economist<\/i>.<\/li>\n\n\n\nGoogle truncates the long title.<\/li>\n\n\n\n In the case of no title, it uses the <h> tag, i.e. the actual headline.<\/li>\n\n\n\n Reorders the title\/brand, e.g. Biznews :: title –> title – Biznews <\/em>or Biznews: title<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nInterestingly, we found no correlation between Google editing or reordering the title and the search rank. It doesn\u2019t seem to be a negative signal. Editing is simply something Google does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the correlation in the chart above actually comes from truncated titles.<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nIt seems that, in the higher ranks, there are fewer titles that need to be truncated overall<\/b>. We can only speculate why, as correlations don\u2019t represent the cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The length may not be the signal itself<\/strong>, but rather the presence of spammy titles with many keywords or poorly formatted garbage titles, like this one here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n24 Calories: Cantaloupe – Low Calorie Foods: 50 Low Calorie Foods That Pack Flavor – Shape Magazine | Healthy & Low Cal Foods | Cantaloupe salad, Cantaloupe cu\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nI would assume that, for example, not having the title at all would also be a negative signal as it indicates a poor quality page, but we found no correlation here either.<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nIn these cases, Google simply uses the < h > tag that serves as the headline for its title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only link we found was that pages with no < title > tag get way less organic traffic<\/strong>. We found this to be the case with truncated titles too.<\/p>\n\n\n\nApparently, if you add pages without clear < h > tags into the mix, Google will have a hard time determining the headline and computer-generated headlines get fewer clicks.<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nConclusion<\/h4>\n\n\n\n A lot of information presented here is more interesting than useful. But, if you\u2019re going to write titles it may come in handy to know how it shows up in the search results. Obviously, titles are what people read and click on. A truncated title won\u2019t deliver the full context and the data confirms that they get way less organic traffic (clicks) than the average.<\/strong> Finally, the idea that Google rewrites titles is overrated. Most titles aren\u2019t really rewritten, including some nonsensical titles, but rather improved<\/strong> in the most primitive algorithmic way. That is the addition of a brand, cleaning up duplicate parts, reordering, or truncating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n2. What\u2019s the Optimal Length?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n OK, so one thing is clear — you don\u2019t want your title truncated<\/b>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Google search results title is kind of like the subject line of an email. Shitty subject lines don\u2019t get opened and it\u2019s the same with poorly written titles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even if your title is written by the reincarnated David Ogilvy himself, if it\u2019s too long for Google to display in the search results nobody will get to read it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no specified character range but Google allows the length to be 600px. That\u2019s about 80 characters<\/b>, depending on your choice of characters, as some take up more space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nIn our dataset, the longest Google search results title is 82 characters long. The longest untruncated title is 78 characters long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bear in mind that Google may extend it by adding your brand, meaning it will cut out a part of the readable text. So, I recommend that you concentrate the most meaningful part of the title within the first 50 characters or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This seems to be a rather new thing as Google recently changed the fonts they use on title tags for Desktop results which made them drop a few characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n