What’s Driving Google’s Title Tag Rewrites?

What Google recommends for title tags and if that influences why title tags are rewritten.

What are the real reasons Google is rewriting title tags? What technology is powering these article rewrites and what does it mean for how publishers and search marketers write title tags?

Data Collection Before Title Tag Rewrites?

In May Google announced an updated platform that helps create new algorithms as well as update older algorithms. This platform is known as Keras-based TF-Ranking.

The updated Keras-based TF-Ranking platform allows the rapid prototyping, testing and rollout of new algorithms. It was also used to help BERT become even more powerful with a new architecture called, TFR-BERT.

What is notable is that it allows the rapid development and deployment of new LTR (Learning to Rank) models, algorithms and improvements to existing algorithms.

This is what Google published: 

“In May 2021, we published a major release of TF-Ranking that enables full support for natively building LTR models using Keras, a high-level API of TensorFlow 2.

Our native Keras ranking model has a brand-new workflow design, including a flexible ModelBuilder, a DatasetBuilder to set up training data, and a Pipeline to train the model with the provided dataset.

These components make building a customized LTR model easier than ever, and facilitate rapid exploration of new model structures for production and research.”

Is it coincidental that there have been multiple updates to the search results at an unprecedented pace ever since that new TF-Ranking platform was announced?

For example, prior to the title tag rewrites in August there was an increase in PAA (People Also Ask) features.

When users interacted with the People Also Ask (PAA) features, those interactions were sent back to Google as data about what users mean when they search for certain queries as well as data about why they did not click on relevant search queries listed in the search results (because maybe the title tags weren’t descriptive?).

So it may follow that how users interacted with the People Also Ask features may have contributed to helping Google understand that for a percentage of search queries some users didn’t click on relevant search results because of the title tags.

TFR-BERT Ranking Algorithm

Google had new and more powerful algorithms to help understand ranking related data.

This is what the Google article about Keras-based TF-Ranking noted about the new version of BERT:

“Our experience shows that this TFR-BERT architecture delivers significant improvements in pretrained language model performance, leading to state-of-the-art performance for several popular ranking tasks…”

Google hasn’t discussed what is powering the title tag rewriting or what data is being used to power it.

So we can only connect the dots between the different algorithms and platform advances that have been made this year.

Some of what we know is:

• An increase in the People Also Ask feature preceded the title tag changes
• The BERT algorithm may have been updated to TFR-BERT
• Google updated a learning to rank platform called Keras-based TF-Ranking that helps development of new machine learning architectures

What Does Google Say About Title Tags?

Google has published an SEO starter guide that features a section about title tags.

Google’s advice on title tags:

"A <title> tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is.

Accurately describe the page’s content

• Choose a title that reads naturally and effectively communicates the topic of the page’s content.
• Create unique titles for each page
• Use brief, but descriptive titles”

Google Does Not Recommend Keywords for Title Tag

Nowhere in Google’s title tag SEO article do they advise adding keywords to the title tag.

Google’s SEO guide doesn’t dissuade publishers from adding keywords into the title tag but Google doesn’t recommend it either.

The only section where Google mentions title tags is in one section where Google says what not to do: “Stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags.”

In Google’s guide for title tags, the above statement is the only place where Google mentions keywords.

It’s worth underlining this point:

Google’s SEO starter guide advises using the title tag to describe what the page is about. Google does not advise using the title tag as a dumping ground for keywords.

Google’s John Mueller on Title Tags

As recently as December 2020 John Mueller said that rather than dump keywords in the title tag it was better to use the title tag to describe what the page is about using the words that a searcher would likely use in order to stimulate click through rate.

He didn’t say that using those keywords would help rankings.

He said, in the context commenting on the use of title tags for dumping keywords, it was better to use a descriptive title tag to get a higher CTR.

Here is what he said:

“…if you can create a title that matches what the user is actually looking for then it’s a little bit easier for them to actually click on a search result because they think “oh this really matches what I was looking for.

So that’s something where I almost think it’s a matter of improving the click-through rate rather than improving the ranking. And if, with the same ranking, you get a higher click-through rate because people recognize your site as being more relevant then that’s kind of a good thing.

And sometimes I suspect the bigger aspect is really the click-through rate from search rather than the ranking effect.”

In the same Google Webmaster Hangout he also said, regarding the use of keywords in title for ranking purposes:“So just because they are used for ranking doesn’t mean you need to put everything in there.”

Mueller has been consistent in his advice about title tags.

In 2016 he said that the title tag isn’t the most critical as a primary ranking signal and that the best use was to describe what the page is about in a way that’s useful to users.

This is what Mueller said:

“We use that just as a part. I think it’s not like the primary ranking factor of a page, to put it that way.

We do use it for ranking but it’s not the most critical part of a page.

So it’s not worthwhile filling it with keywords to kind of hope that it works that way.

In general we try to recognize when a title tag is stuffed with keywords because that’s also a bad user experience for users in the search results.

If they’re looking to understand what these pages are about and they just see a jumble of keywords, then that doesn’t really help.”

Mueller next addressed having keywords in the title tag:

“Having keywords in the title tag is fine. I would just kind of write the title tag in a way that really describes in maybe one sentence what this page is actually about.

To really make a clear title rather than to just have like keyword-1, keyword-2, keyword-3 in there.”

John Mueller could not be any clearer about the proper use of title tags: The proper use of title tags is to describe what the page is about.

That point of view matches exactly with what the most current version of Google’s SEO Starter guide says about the proper use of title tags.

When asked about what he would deem critical for rankings, if not title tags, Mueller responded that the actual content on the page was critical. He then presented an example of a Q&A site that didn’t have title tags or descriptions because they wanted Google to use what was on the web page itself and Mueller said it worked well for them.

Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-title-tag-rewrite-reasons/419452/