Google rewrites many page titles • Hacker News Board

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#251

Post by eyelidlessness » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 2:13 AM UTC

What I find fascinating is I’ve seen a small, but increasing, subset of results where:

- the result title is clearly not original, usually derived from content on the page

- the original title is known to be generated

- the original generated title is as close to harmless as any web content could be

- the result title is actively harmful and misleading

- the original title is demonstrably better

- this idiosyncrasy is applied to very high trust hosts (eg GitHub)

- it’s not applied to the same content from obvious scraped content/spam/scam sites with obvious tells

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#252

Post by autoexec » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 4:28 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #126

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.

I think you've got this wrong - they should heavily editorialize the titles. Honest titles of search results: * Five pages of flowery text and images before two lines of instruction on how to boil rice * A bunch of tantalizing pictures of exactly what you're looking for but zero further information about it * Product reviews machine-generated from public review sources with affiliate links. Top-rated product has the…

That depends on Google being both honest and accurate. Perhaps they have been so far, but my concern would be that a re-written title would cause quality content to get passed over by many viewers as undesirable/irrelevant because some algorithm misunderstood/misinterpreted what it was looking at, or because google wanted to subtly discourage people from content that competes or disagrees with whatever Google is attempting to promote.

In a better world, algorithms would be perfect and there would be a lot of healthy competition in search engines and google would be incentivized to provide users with the best possible results. In our current world Google's algorithm can't identify obvious spam well enough to keep it out of their results and there are no major search engines that haven't been lifting results from Google directly or indirectly and repackaging them as their own, so google has no pressure to do anything but promote whatever is in their own best interests or keep their results accurate and free of spam.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#253

Post by tdeck » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 5:02 AM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #206

stickfigure wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've got this wrong - they should heavily editorialize the titles. Honest titles of search results: * Five pages of flowery text and images before two lines of instruction on how to boil rice * A bunch of tantalizing pictures of exactly what you're looking for but zero further information about it * Product reviews machine-generated from public review sources with affiliate links. Top-rated product has the…

Ah, rice. The quintessential Asian grain, now consumed by billions around the world. When I was a child, my mixed-race family used to eat rice every day! Even today, the subtle aroma of rice wafting up from the kitchen brings a sense of nostalgia. It's a sure sign that dinner is approaching, my favorite meal of the day... [5 pages later] 1. Put rice and water in rice cooker 2. Press "start"

You forgot the part where there's a pseudo-recipe after the story that catches your eye but doesn't have any measured amounts, and then the actual recipe later.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#254

Post by cyrusshepard » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 5:54 AM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #58

Giorgi wrote: post #44

Ok... owning couple of dozen sites all submitted and fully indexed, I have never seen even single URL re-written. Does this really happen?

Google claimed that the original is used "more than 80% of the time" when announcing the change[0]. Combining this rate with the rate seen by the article (rewritten 61% of the time, on the subset of 81,000 URLs they were interested in), I'd guess that some websites see a lot of rewrites and many other websites see none at all. [0] https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/08/update-to-...

So an interesting distinction here is required! When Google says they use the title 80% of the time, they mean they use the title 80% of the time to create their search result title, which they may or may not modify. The other 20% of the time they use an H1 or other elements on the page.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#255

Post by cyrusshepard » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 6:21 AM UTC

avivo wrote: post #90

I had this problem recently, was hoping there was a reasonable fix but it appears not... (the H1 already contains the title) I don't think about SEO, and just focus on useful writing / societal impact. However, I recently discovered by accident that I ended up with a top 2 search result for "platform democracy": https://google.com/search?q=platform+democracy . But the title is missing the first 3 words—including the…

Author here. Frustrating situation. As the title is long at 84 characters, we know that Google is definitely going to rewrite it. The simplest way is to break it into parts and get rid of the shortest part that still makes sense.

So maybe take

'Towards Platform Democracy: Policymaking Beyond Corporate CEOs and Partisan Pressure'

And 1) condense it and 2) lose the colon

'Platform Democracy is Policymaking Beyond CEOs & Partisanship' (60 characters)

If that is too condensed, you could try a a short title in the and a longer title in the copy.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#256

Post by cyrusshepard » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 6:44 AM UTC

junon wrote: post #214

Why was the title edited here on HN? The original title is much better, and had more information. A bit ironic given the subject matter. Dang, was this your doing? If so, can we please have an open discussion on this? It's happened a few times and it's annoying and seemingly randomly enforced. The guidelines state not to editorialize headers but this rule gets ignored a lot. What was deficient about the original titl…

My guess is because it was self-submitted, it was held to a higher standard. Fair enough.

And in some universes the title could be considered click bait, although it is accurate in this case.

Moderation is a tough job. You never win.

That said, the revised HN title seems like it was written by bad AI. The point seemed to be to drive it off the homepage. In that, the HN title succeeded.

Regardless, I'm happy the article generated a lot of interesting discussion before manually being deemed unfit.

It is curious how at the same time the title changed, all the top comments (which were generally supportive) got pushed to the bottom. And now, including yours. Assuming this article touched a nerve at the same time someone was having a bad day.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#257

Post by CRConrad » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 7:05 AM UTC

prawn wrote: post #243

titanomachy wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, rice. The quintessential Asian grain, now consumed by billions around the world. When I was a child, my mixed-race family used to eat rice every day! Even today, the subtle aroma of rice wafting up from the kitchen brings a sense of nostalgia. It's a sure sign that dinner is approaching, my favorite meal of the day... [5 pages later] 1. Put rice and water in rice cooker 2. Press "start"

Isn't Google one major reason that recipe sites act like this? They've long favoured sites with a lot of textual content (which authors then break up with images) and also penalised sites that people tend to reverse out of quickly? A long story fits that because the majority of people need to read down for the content rather than get their instant answer and immediately retreat. I find it annoying too, but it often f…

> I don't think I've ever searched for a recipe and come across a barebones Gantt-chart-style engineer-thinking recipe plan.

https://clovegarden.com/recipes/index.html

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#258

Post by prawn » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 7:11 AM UTC

CRConrad wrote: post #257

prawn wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Google one major reason that recipe sites act like this? They've long favoured sites with a lot of textual content (which authors then break up with images) and also penalised sites that people tend to reverse out of quickly? A long story fits that because the majority of people need to read down for the content rather than get their instant answer and immediately retreat. I find it annoying too, but it often f…

> I don't think I've ever searched for a recipe and come across a barebones Gantt-chart-style engineer-thinking recipe plan. https://clovegarden.com/recipes/index.html

Sorry, I might not have been clear enough. I know they exist. I'm saying that I've never searched for a recipe for something and a leading result has been in that sort of format. Google has created the environment in which the maligned 'epic story and photo album finished by actual recipe' formula wins through, yet the recipe creators get the ridicule.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#259

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 7:33 AM UTC

prawn wrote: post #243

titanomachy wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, rice. The quintessential Asian grain, now consumed by billions around the world. When I was a child, my mixed-race family used to eat rice every day! Even today, the subtle aroma of rice wafting up from the kitchen brings a sense of nostalgia. It's a sure sign that dinner is approaching, my favorite meal of the day... [5 pages later] 1. Put rice and water in rice cooker 2. Press "start"

Isn't Google one major reason that recipe sites act like this? They've long favoured sites with a lot of textual content (which authors then break up with images) and also penalised sites that people tend to reverse out of quickly? A long story fits that because the majority of people need to read down for the content rather than get their instant answer and immediately retreat. I find it annoying too, but it often f…

[deleted]

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#260

Post by edeion » Thu, Jan 27, 2022, 10:31 AM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #206

stickfigure wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've got this wrong - they should heavily editorialize the titles. Honest titles of search results: * Five pages of flowery text and images before two lines of instruction on how to boil rice * A bunch of tantalizing pictures of exactly what you're looking for but zero further information about it * Product reviews machine-generated from public review sources with affiliate links. Top-rated product has the…

Ah, rice. The quintessential Asian grain, now consumed by billions around the world. When I was a child, my mixed-race family used to eat rice every day! Even today, the subtle aroma of rice wafting up from the kitchen brings a sense of nostalgia. It's a sure sign that dinner is approaching, my favorite meal of the day... [5 pages later] 1. Put rice and water in rice cooker 2. Press "start"

Reminds me of Plain Old Recipe, a website that strips out fluff from big recipe websites. You provide a link to a recipe, it makes it to the point. I thought the site had closed but it's apparently still live!

https://plainoldrecipe.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23648864 (Thank you HN :))