A title link is the title of a search result on Google Search and other properties (for example, Google News) that links to the web page. Google uses a number of different sources to automatically determine the title link, but you can indicate your preferences by following our best practices for influencing title links .
Best practices for influencing title links
Title links are critical to giving users a quick insight into the content of a result and why it’s relevant to their query. It’s often the primary piece of information people use to decide which result to click on, so it’s important to use high-quality title text on your web pages.
Make sure every page on your site has a title specified in the
Write descriptive and concise text for your
Avoid keyword stuffing . It’s sometimes helpful to have a few descriptive terms in the
Avoid repeated or boilerplate text in
Brand your titles concisely. The
Make it clear which text is the main title for the page. Google looks at various sources when creating title links , including the main visual title, heading elements, and other large and prominent text, and it can be confusing if multiple headings carry the same visual weight and prominence. Consider ensuring that your main title is distinctive from other text on a page and stands out as being the most prominent on the page (for example, using a larger font, putting the title text in the first visible
element on the page, etc).
Be careful about disallowing search engines from crawling your pages. Using the robots.txt protocol on your site can stop Google from crawling your pages, but it may not always prevent them from being indexed. For example, Google may index your page if we discover it by following a link from someone else’s site. If we don’t have access to the content on your page, we will rely on off-page content to generate the title link, such as anchor text from other sites. To prevent a URL from being indexed, you can use the noindex directive .
Use the same script and language as the primary content on your pages. Google tries to show a title link that matches the primary script and language of a page. If Google determines that a
How title links in Google Search are created
Google’s generation of title links on the Google Search results page is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page and references to it that appear on the web. The goal of the title link is to best represent and describe each result.
Keep in mind that Google has to recrawl and reprocess the page to notice updates to these sources, which may take a few days to a few weeks. If you’ve made changes, you can request that Google recrawl your pages .
While we can’t manually change title links for individual sites, we’re always working to make them as relevant as possible. You can help improve the quality of the title link that’s displayed for your page by following the best practices .
Troubleshooting common issues
Here are the most common issues we see with title links in search results. To avoid these issues, follow the best practices for controlling title links . Why the title link in search results might differ from the page’s
Submitting feedback about title links
If you’re seeing your pages appear in the search results with modified title links, check whether your page has one of the issues that Google adjusts for. If not, consider whether the title link in search results is a better fit for the query. If you still think the original title text would be better, let us know in our Google Search Central Help Community .