Title Junk • Hacker News Board

Re: Title Junk

#31

Post by m0th87 » Tue, Dec 21, 2010, 1:14 AM UTC

scdlbx wrote: post #6

Semiapies wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we could usefully distinguish billions of sites by their tiny little icons? ETA: To expand, I just opened the top 12 stories on HN right this moment in new tabs. I recognized the NYT logo in one favicon and the Apple logo in another. Of the other eight that did have favicons, those little icons told me absolutely nothing useful. A few of those sites did indicate their names in the titles, however.

I can distinguish the icons of every site I visit on a semi-regular basis.

I guess you're not blind :)

Having only icons would be such an accessibility disaster.

Re: Title Junk

#32

Post by AgentConundrum » Tue, Dec 21, 2010, 1:22 AM UTC

Putting SEO keywords in the page title (a) doesn’t actually help your page’s rank in search engine indexes

Paging patio11. Patio11 to this thread please.

Re: Title Junk

#33

Post by rayvega » Tue, Dec 21, 2010, 1:32 AM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #8

Putting SEO keywords in the page title (a) doesn’t actually help your page’s rank in search engine indexes, and (b) makes things harder for people trying to tweet a link, bookmark your page, or scan it from a list of currently open windows and tabs in their browser. Trust the Googlebot to figure it out. I'm pretty sure point (a) is false [1], and I'm absolutely sure that the conclusion (trust the Googlebot!) is. You…

StackOverflow recently began adding keyword tags to their page titles to help increase SEO in combating clone sites:

http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/6556/does-the-...

One user was unhappy with it, but Atwood's response is that they had no choice:

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71906/first-tag-in-t...

Re: Title Junk

#34

Post by colanderman » Tue, Dec 21, 2010, 1:32 AM UTC

bergie wrote: post #2

If all sites had proper favicons for branding we could start dropping site name from page titles and focus just on the content.

Downside: favicons don't have alt attributes; this would impair accessibility.

Re: Title Junk

#35

Post by btig » Tue, Dec 21, 2010, 1:45 AM UTC

bergie wrote: post #2

If all sites had proper favicons for branding we could start dropping site name from page titles and focus just on the content.

For my bookmarks bar, I remove the title. http://i.imgur.com/eRjJP.png

Re: Title Junk

#36

Post by jacobolus » Tue, Dec 21, 2010, 1:48 AM UTC

aneth wrote: post #25

Complaining about proper punctuation in web page titles seems a little pedantic. Using colons and other strange "punctuation" is a substitute for graphics and styling since these are not available in title bars. For those cases where it is meant to be sort-of punctuation, I'd say titles on the internet simply follow a different set of rules and conventions than prose, or anything else prior, because they serve a diff…

The New Yorker (e.g.) is a publication known for its typographical pedantry, for example writing diaereses in words such as coöperate or naïve; it’s entirely uncharacteristic of them to have sloppily punctuated titles.

Re: Title Junk

#37

Post by Raphael » Tue, Dec 21, 2010, 1:48 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #27

Apple’s homepage is used as an example, since its title is simply “Apple”, but other pages at Apple’s site are named fairly inconsistently: some use curly apostrophes, others use straight ones. Some have sentences ending in periods; others don’t. Some use sentence case; others use title case. Some pages just state what the page is; others read like marketing babble. Examples: Apple Welcome to the Apple Store – Apple…

Great, so if you have a bunch of shrunken tabs, you just see "Apple" over and over. Usability experts have said for years to put the subject first in the page title and then tack on branding afterward if you must.

Re: Title Junk

#38

Post by petercooper » Tue, Dec 21, 2010, 1:54 AM UTC

bergie wrote: post #2

If all sites had proper favicons for branding we could start dropping site name from page titles and focus just on the content.

A lot of sites already do that.

In reality it should work fine because searches also include the URL so you can easily see the source (same idea as used by HN items). Titles are easier to fake so can't be entirely trusted anyway.

Re: Title Junk

#39

Post by alanh » Tue, Dec 21, 2010, 1:59 AM UTC

Given that do matter for SEO, I wonder if there are any drawbacks to stuffing the with keywords but, on page load, changing it to something short & meaningful, for a more pleasant bookmarking & browsing experience.

Re: Title Junk

#40

Post by qjz » Tue, Dec 21, 2010, 2:06 AM UTC

there wrote: post #21

MSNBC is the fourth result at Google in a search for “news”, but its page title is so long that “MSNBC” doesn’t actually appear in the result entry title. that is hilarious. i wonder how quickly you can a/b test a change on a website with regard to its pagerank.

It saddens me when I work with a non-governmental organization (NGO) and need to copy some text from a website, only to find that the name and contact information is embedded in a graphic, with no text equivalent anywhere in the content. A simple search engine query usually confirms that the site's pagerank suffers.