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Google rewrites many page titles

zyppy.com

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Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#71

Post by marginalia_nu »

ncphil wrote: post #67
marginalia_nu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a massive loss, though. A lot of content isn't in HTML5, and a lot of that pre-HTML5 content is precious and valuable. Google has sadly already tossed a lot of that by the wayside, since it often isn't served with HTTPS. I think something like 80% of the sites my crawler is aware of serve pages over plain HTTP. In general, attempts at shaping the web through search engine indexing requirements seems to…

Not so sure older content (like the stuff I wrote in the late 90s to mid 00s) would be negatively impacted, so long as search providers pay careful attention to the tag (or lack thereof). I wouldn't characterize holding people to at least a bare minimum of standards (e.g., title in the head and nowhere else, which has been the rule since at least HTML 2.0 in 1994) as "punishment", any more than dinging them for unclo…

That really doesn't seem to be what I'm seeing, having built a search engine specialized in this type of content and finding almost nothing but gems in the refuse.

If anything, it seems like the single best predictor of whether a website is a content mill is strict adherence to modern web standards and other "google rules".

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#72

Post by eraserj »

phreeza wrote: post #7

It's quite funny to me that people are running these kind of almost scientific experiments on a fully human-generated and in principle knowable system. The reason are understandable of course but it does seem like a waste of human energy.

Ironically, they failed to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#73

Post by [deleted] »

phreeza wrote: post #7

It's quite funny to me that people are running these kind of almost scientific experiments on a fully human-generated and in principle knowable system. The reason are understandable of course but it does seem like a waste of human energy.

[deleted]

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#74

Post by LightG »

judge2020 wrote: post #52
Loughla wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't see many reasons why a site owner would spend extraordinary amounts of time to "carefully craft" page titles Because I want the title to be concise, but still help people explicitly understand what my writing is about? Because I've already spent a lot of time on the content, to then just slap 'Lou's Wednesday Website Update' as a title? Because, historically, a title is an introduction to my writing? Any of…

Regarding one of these examples: How to Fix a Broken iPhone Screen [Tested by Experts] - Phone Fixer -> How to Fix a Broken iPhone Screen - Phone Fixer Tested by Experts is obviously clickbait; nobody's going to say [Tested by novices]. Same for things like [Updated 2022] - there are tons of websites that superimpose [updated ] even if the article content wasn't updated.

Not obviously. If true, adds credibility.

"Phone Fixer" sounds more scammy to me, lol

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#75

Post by JumpCrisscross »

_jal wrote: post #61
phreeza wrote: post #7

It's quite funny to me that people are running these kind of almost scientific experiments on a fully human-generated and in principle knowable system. The reason are understandable of course but it does seem like a waste of human energy.

> but it does seem like a waste of human energy Legal processes are enormous wastes of human energy on what are usually negative-sum games. In only humans could cooperate.

> Legal processes are enormous wastes of human energy on what are usually negative-sum games

I don’t know if this is true. Private legal disputes can be purely antagonistic.

They can also be a form of short-term adversarial long-term adaptation to new information. Court cases, on the other hand, produce precedent (irrespective of the legal system). That, too, helps guide a society through novel circumstances.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#76

Post by butler14 »

Zyppy's content marketing efforts aside, this wouldn't be so much of an issue if Google was any good at it

But as with its meta description rewrites, they're often worse than what was there to start with, and in some cases completely change the meaning, to the detriment of searcher experience

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#77

Post by nightpool »

onion2k wrote: post #25
zbrozek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shrug. The almost-religious belief in the necessity for ultra-consistent branding within some companies is nearly comical so long as you're on the outside.

It's relatively minor for most businesses, but sometimes it isn't. Inconsistent messaging makes it a lot easier for someone to set up a phishing attack against your customers. My bank uses several different URLs, email sending addresses, and taglines for its services. It's not always easy to tell if an email is actually from the bank. Google adding more permutations into the mix doesn't help.

Google changing the way title tags are formatted on their SERP is not the reason that your bank's customers are falling for phishing attacks.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#78

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

gibspaulding wrote: post #32
phreeza wrote: post #7

It's quite funny to me that people are running these kind of almost scientific experiments on a fully human-generated and in principle knowable system. The reason are understandable of course but it does seem like a waste of human energy.

You see this a lot in gaming too. There are entire sites, devoted to figuring out what various weapon attachments actually do in Call of Duty. If you poke around the Minecraft wiki you'll find the same thing - people working out exactly how fast you can move with different potion effects or how scaling works when leveling up enchantments. Theoretically, all of this information could be found in the source code, but w…

I'm not convinced that having the source code is necessarily a perfect shortcut to accurate results. Video games, in particular, seem to be subject to a decent amount of emergent behaviors such that scientifically measuring things is honestly probably a better option than trying to read the source code to find out what the developer thinks should happen.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#79

Post by edave64 »

ricardo81 wrote: post #63
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.

Can't say I agree. Google should be a neutral middle man providing the results as they are found. If they feel the title is not of their version of quality they should rank it lower. I'd prefer the version of title of several hundred million individuals rather than Google's aggregated version. They used to 'borrow' DMOZ titles before DMOZ became defunct. At least in that case it's another point of view on top of thei…

Google can't be a neutral middleman because everybody is trying to manipulate the search results. If everybody is clickbaiting their page titles, and Google just displays them as is, it makes their product worse.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#80

Post by phkahler »

Loughla wrote: post #42
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 don't see many reasons why a site owner would spend extraordinary amounts of time to "carefully craft" page titles Because I want the title to be concise, but still help people explicitly understand what my writing is about? Because I've already spent a lot of time on the content, to then just slap 'Lou's Wednesday Website Update' as a title? Because, historically, a title is an introduction to my writing? Any of…

>>> Because I want the title to be concise, but still help people explicitly understand what my writing is about?

And yet from TFA:

>> In fact, we found that matching your H1 to your title dropped typically dropped the degree of rewriting across the board, often dramatically.

Users don't look much at titles - they end up in the browser tab or somewhere like that. If a title doesn't match the H1 heading it's often to get more stuff in for SEO. OTOH short titles might be useful when they show up in a tab where there is limited space. Maybe they shouldn't lengthen them for that reason.

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