Some time ago I showed if you had a long spammy page title Google would ‘forgive you’. Last year Google seemed to count the first 8-12 words (displaying 70 characters in a search snippet) and then just count the rest of the words as part of your text but it would not obviously penalise you for a massive title.
A company contacted me to ask:
I was looking to see why my site has not been getting any hits
I Looked at the home page title:
Company Name – xxxxxxx, telephone, health and safety, xxxxxxx, scanner, PC, fax, monitor, xxxxxx, keyboard, office equipment, cleaning, cleaning service, cleaning company, computer cleaning, xxxxxxxx cleaning, PC cleaning, dust control, telephone cleaning, computer xxxxxx cleaning, anti static, xxxxxx room, printer cleaning, xxxxxxx display unit, raised access xxxxxx, preventative maintenance, zinc dust, anti static mat, xxxxxxx room, anti static flooring, xxxxxxx room, computer cleaning equipment, keyboard cleaning, companyname uk
In Google I was kind of shocked to see Google choke completely on the title, even though it’s not malformed, just spammy:
Google shows no title in the page title link in the SERPS:
So, remember way back when I pointed out Google would read a lot of characters in your title? Perhaps that’s not the case now! In the case I’m showing Google has bumped the title completely and it’s affecting the site badly.
There are H1s on the page (multiples too) – but perhaps if created corectly, Google would use these H1 as the title tag. Unfortunately, they are using images in H1 Tags – lordy.
Recently I have spotted Google helping sites with just Home in their Page Title, and using other methods to form a Page Title. It *might* be that Google is now kicking back against clearly manipulative spammy titles – it certanly appears so for this search for the company name – so even more reason to optimise your page titles properly for Google.
I’ve never seen Google kill a site like that before – then again I don’t do spam, and there are some other issues the site has…. oh well, back to work.
More Reading on Page Title Tags:
- Home Page Title Is Wrong In Google Search Results
- How Many Characters In A Page Title For Google SEO?
- How Many Words In A Page Title Tag?
- Dynamic Titles In Google SERP Snippet
- How Google, Yahoo & MSN Handle Title Snippets If They Choke
- No Page Title In Google Results
- Google Will Use H1,H2,H3,H4,H5 & H6 Headers As Titles
- How Many Title Tag Characters Will Google Display in a Search Snippet
Would be interesting to see any other examples of excessive number of words/characters in the TITLE. Seen in the past that even though it’s truncated, it will still appear for related searches, perhaps there’s a middle ground before hitting the insane area. Although, personally, i’m glad, shouldn’t be spamming the TITLE anyway, put some thought into it, VS just trying to get as much in as possible :)
I would link to the site but I don’t like outing people. If I find any I’ll add to the post :)
Of course :) fully understand I’ll drop a link when i can remember the example i came across awhile back, just need to dust the cobwebs out my head. LOL
This make sense to me as people tend to use title tag like the old keywords meta. Would like to see the impact of unrelated title tags full of keywords, irrelevance between the title tag and the page content.
Good! If this is true, then I’m glad that Google is pushing back. I hate it when people try to game the system. It ruins the web for everyone else. (Don’t even get me started on Twitter “marketing gurus.”)
Interesting observation. I wouldn’t be suprised if H1s (or other on-page element) overtakes the strength of the title if it hasn’t already. It would make sense considering the (ab)use of the title. Did the ranking sites using HOME in the title have an optimised H1?
Hi kay I did a bit of research on it I’ll dig around my drafts and publish shortly.
Very interesting this behavior. Bing is doing something similar you told us at last paragraph. They are choosing the best title for many pages of some websites. Interesting info!
Thanks for the info………………..My learning has been that 70 characters is the max that will go up on the google page. If you exceed 70 characters then your sentence is reduced to less than 70 characters and the words are replaced with …………………. so you get 65 ish characters and spaces. My only other learning to save the pain of counting up characters and spaces is that in “Word” under Tools is word count which has a characters and space facility. It took me an age to find.
I wonder, is branding still ok? I have, let’s say. Page Name | Company Name (Consulting in Cape Cod | JG Software and Consulting) The Page Name is most relevant to the page, and will have keywords close to it in the heading. (I think I should use main Keyword (cape code consulting) in the title and first synonym/related in the H1(Cape Code Consulting Services) ) I want to brand my name, so I tag it at the end, like in WordPress. Trying to make sure I am always less than 70 chars… What do you think?
Thanks Shaun, always fun to read your posts. I, like many above me, am glad to see Google taking affirmative actions against spammers. However, I am more curious about “Home” titles being restructured based on page content. I see *so many* sites that are just “Home”, “About”, “Contact” etc. Interesting if they start organically ranking. Would you have any searches you can share that shows that example? Thanks, keep it up! (I have no idea how you get any work done). ;)
Very interesting your post! I saw something similar in a website here in Brazil! Thank You!