Sat 14 Jul 2007
SEO MythBuster Test #2 - Title Tag & SEO
Posted by Shaun AndersonSEO MythBuster Test #2 - The Title element
How many words will Google read of your title tag or Everything You ever Wanted To Know About The Title Element & SEO?
Why am I bothering to test this? Sometimes I ask myself that….but actually the title tag is perhaps one of the single most important elements you have under your control that could affect your ranking in Google, Yahoo and MSN. So my thinking is, the more knowledge I have about this “tag”, the better. I’m just choosing to share this bit of research with everybody.
First, lets start correctly. It’s not really a “tag” or worse a “meta-tag” - it’s an “element”, but that’s a bit like saying a URL is not a URL it is a URI, but I digress. Everybody calls it a tag. I would think by now most people who have ever done a bit of research into this element will know that Google displays the first 65 characters in search results pages (serps).
But some mistakingly believe that’s all Google takes into account when reading these elements and delivering serps. Now, while I know pretty much for certain that this is not the case, I wanted to test for myself (again) another possible “measurable factor” in seo for Google:
“How many keywords in the Title Element Will Google Read & Factor For SERPS”
So here’s the test. Again, remember, if you think I’ve screwed something up, or have an idea to make this test better, let me know by adding a comment or calling me an idiot on your blog. 
- 1 Test Page
- 5 Word Sample Keywords
- Only mention of keyword is in title, not on the page
Here’s the test page if you want to examine it. I’m hoping it’s not too spammy for the search engines. If it is I have another, more long winded way to test this, but I am hoping this will suffice.
Ok. So I”ll be back in couple of days to finish this post once we have the results back (one benefit of a trusted PR 7 site - Google’s a friend who drops by often!). Remember to drop me a nice link if you get the results before me
- Mythbuster Test #1 - Did Google Prefer Valid HTML?
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I’m really interested in the outcome!
Comment by Bobbink — July 15, 2007 @ 12:06 am
Interesting test. I’m hoping it’s 256 characters, but probably it’s a lot less. I’ll put my money on somewhere around 100 characters.
Comment by Joost — July 15, 2007 @ 3:51 am
The test is fine but you have ask yourself a question if google read for example 200 characters and in serps it shows only 65 how powerfull are the keywords in title if it is so long. Its obvious that main keywords should be at the beginning and the more keywords you have in the title the less its affects on you ranking. I always give not more then 3 phrases in title and more often i give 2 phrases. The shorter is title the better I got results.
Comment by Meble Biurowe — July 15, 2007 @ 11:16 am
I can’t wait!
Comment by seoidiot — July 15, 2007 @ 11:47 am
Meble - Hopefully we’ll get a chance to test this and other things. Thanks for the comments all
Comment by Shaun Anderson — July 15, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
Will be interested to hear the outcome. However I do know that when I inserted more keywords in my page title, my ranking for a common search term went up significantly.
Comment by Free SMS Andy — July 16, 2007 @ 1:59 pm
It’s 10 days later and it looks like Google has not indexed your test page….
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.hobo-web.co.uk%2Ftitle-tag-seo%2F
It’s the same story for Yahoo.
Do you have any idea what’s going on?
Comment by Joost — July 24, 2007 @ 5:13 pm
Yup I know exactly what is happened, and again, it was useful in some way.
Basically I think Google has thought “this page has a really spammy title, I’m going to ignore it”.
So lesson learned. If your page title is too spammy, Google will ignore it.
I’m going to modify the page to account for this because although it’s interesting it’s not really what I am testing here..
Comment by Shaun Anderson — July 24, 2007 @ 5:22 pm
Ok, makes sense.
Good luck
Comment by Joost — July 24, 2007 @ 5:27 pm
Aha! We have a result but I think I underestimated Google. They did indeed spider the page after spending a lot of time thinking about it!
Google in fact gulped down the whole title element we used in the test page.
That’s 25 words. 125 characters with no spaces. 149 with spaces.
So now we have a little surprise in store for Google when it returns. We’ve upped the characters in the title tag to push Google further to divulge more of it’s workings.
Note - Google seemed to use the whole 149 characters in this test to determine the serps.
I tested this with the keyphrase “hobod hoboy”.
Comment by Shaun Anderson — July 25, 2007 @ 6:24 pm
The dots at the end of the title in Google are also boldened. Hadn’t seen that before…
Maybe it is 256 characters.
Comment by Joost — July 25, 2007 @ 8:25 pm
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