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Google rewrites many page titles

zyppy.com

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Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#111

Post by lelandfe »

pavon wrote: post #68
xg15 wrote: post #29

> Many site owners find that the titles they carefully craft almost all get rewritten. Yeah, I'm with Google on this one. I don't see many reasons why a site owner would spend extraordinary amounts of time to "carefully craft" page titles other than SEO and optimizing for clickbaitness. As a user, I'm fine with Google counteracting this.

I think that is the worst reason for them to rewrite titles. If they left the title as-is, then I would be able to see in the search results that it was a spammy site and ignore it. Instead Google is helping to launder their SEO and present it as a more legitimate site. If Google thinks a site is gaming their algorithms they should de-prioritize it, not rewrite it.

"Gaming their algorithm" sounds like a fancy way of saying SEO. If Google can produce for me a more accurate (or concise) title, it should only help me find what I'm looking for.

Forcing folks to trudge through inaccurate titles – or hoping people know the tells of a "spammy site" title – does not seem a better alternative.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#112

Post by justin_oaks »

tiborsaas wrote: post #31

Google has a guide on this :) https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/appearanc...

While the Zyppy article is interesting in that it has statistics about the title rewriting, the Google guide on writing proper titles is more relevant to all of us who maintain websites affected by this. Thanks for linking it.

The ideal article would be something like "Google rewrites your titles in search results because your titles suck."

The Google guide does well to explain why some titles are rewritten, such as having duplicate titles across multiple pages, making it impossible to differentiate between pages that show up in the same set of search results.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#113

Post by travisgriggs »

I’m no search engine expert. Is this standard practice at some level across other search engines? Is “retitler” just part of every search engine stack (e.g. DDG, Bing, BraveSearch, etc)?

Or is this unique to the “I’m Feeling Lucky” folks?

Honestly curios.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#114

Post by stickfigure »

travisgriggs wrote: post #107

I totally get this. Back in the day when I was a kid, we went to the local library and read about the world. When the librarians weren’t serving me by “checking out books” to me, they were busily putting new and improved titles on the books in receiving. /s Seriously. Google is starting to feel less like the librarian of the net (we index the world) and more like the Truman show: we craft your reality.

Given how site owners habitually attempt to distort reality with tag stuffing and other bullshit metadata, what do you expect? Reality is not what is printed on the tin.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#115

Post by time_to_smile »

yucky wrote: post #104
xg15 wrote: post #29

> Many site owners find that the titles they carefully craft almost all get rewritten. Yeah, I'm with Google on this one. I don't see many reasons why a site owner would spend extraordinary amounts of time to "carefully craft" page titles other than SEO and optimizing for clickbaitness. As a user, I'm fine with Google counteracting this.

>As a user, I'm fine with Google counteracting this. Would you be fine with Google changing the work of all authors? Maybe "The Brothers Karamazov" doesn't get enough clicks and Google decides it needs a better title. Or "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" doesn't quite convey what Google thinks it should... How is that different?

To be fair, The Karamazov Brothers is arguably a more natural English translation.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#116

Post by reaperducer »

logifail wrote: post #86
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we're going to start filtering all "obvious clickbait" then the search results are going to change fairly dramatically Isn’t this the intended effect?

> Isn’t this the intended effect? I hate clickbait as much as the next user, but using that technique to get users to click appears to have even become part of the core business model of previously prestigious outlets. Picking on the WaPo for no real reason: How the Washington Post pulled off the hardest trick in journalism https://www.cjr.org/public_editor/washington-post-fluff-news... An Open Letter to the Washingt…

As a subscriber to several newspapers, it's always interesting to see how different the headlines are between the dead tree editions, and the online versions — even for the same story.

The dead tree headlines are almost always very factual and to the point. I don't think I've ever seen anything close to something like "Here's four awesome tricks to get China to admit to the Tiananmen Square massacre" as a headline in actual print.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#117

Post by dpark »

logifail wrote: post #86
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we're going to start filtering all "obvious clickbait" then the search results are going to change fairly dramatically Isn’t this the intended effect?

> Isn’t this the intended effect? I hate clickbait as much as the next user, but using that technique to get users to click appears to have even become part of the core business model of previously prestigious outlets. Picking on the WaPo for no real reason: How the Washington Post pulled off the hardest trick in journalism https://www.cjr.org/public_editor/washington-post-fluff-news... An Open Letter to the Washingt…

The easiest fix for clickbait would be to penalize them for it.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#118

Post by addingnumbers »

lelandfe wrote: post #111
pavon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is the worst reason for them to rewrite titles. If they left the title as-is, then I would be able to see in the search results that it was a spammy site and ignore it. Instead Google is helping to launder their SEO and present it as a more legitimate site. If Google thinks a site is gaming their algorithms they should de-prioritize it, not rewrite it.

"Gaming their algorithm" sounds like a fancy way of saying SEO. If Google can produce for me a more accurate (or concise) title, it should only help me find what I'm looking for. Forcing folks to trudge through inaccurate titles – or hoping people know the tells of a "spammy site" title – does not seem a better alternative.

> "Gaming their algorithm" sounds like a fancy way of saying SEO

It's quite the opposite, "Search Engine Optimization" is the fancy euphemism for gaming the algorithm.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#119

Post by bobbyi »

This data is based on what's seen in the wild, right? So if they see text in brackets removed more often than text in parentheses, that could reflect what sort of text people tend to put in brackets vs parentheses rather than (or in addition to) how google treats those characters.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#120

Post by reaperducer »

falcolas wrote: post #93
xg15 wrote: post #29

> Many site owners find that the titles they carefully craft almost all get rewritten. Yeah, I'm with Google on this one. I don't see many reasons why a site owner would spend extraordinary amounts of time to "carefully craft" page titles other than SEO and optimizing for clickbaitness. As a user, I'm fine with Google counteracting this.

If this were being done by a person, I might agree with you. But it's not. It's being done by an algorithm which was carefully crafted to improve someone's chance for getting a promotion. It won't be maintained long term, yet it will continue to punish articles based on wholly arbitrary, biased, and opaque logic.

If this were being done by a person, I might agree with you. But it's not. It's being done by an algorithm which was carefully crafted [by a person] to improve someone's chance for getting a promotion.

I made a little change there. Algorithms don't just magically appear like leprechauns and unicorns.

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