Google’s John Mueller offered a surprising explanation about the ranking impact of title tags. His answer challenged the SEO belief that title tags are a critical ranking factor and clarified their actual role.
Mueller also discussed the proper use of meta descriptions.
Title Elements
The purpose of title tags is to provide a general description of the topic of a webpage.
Google’s SEO Starter Guide shows how to write titles:
“…a good title is unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page. For example, your title could include the name of your website or business, other bits of important information like the physical location of the business, and maybe some information about what the particular page has to offer for users.”
The official W3C documentation defines the purpose of the title tag like this:
“The title element represents the document’s title or name. Authors should use titles that identify their documents even when they are used out of context, for example in a user’s history or bookmarks, or in search results. The document’s title is often different from its first heading, since the first heading does not have to stand alone when taken out of context.”
See also: The Art & Science of Writing Title Tags
Meta Description
The meta description describes the web page (that’s why it’s called a meta description).
The official W3C HTML documentation says:
“description
The value must be a free-form string that describes the page. The value must be appropriate for use in a directory of pages, e.g. in a search engine. There must not be more than one meta element with its name attribute set to the value description per document.”
Google’s SEO Stater Guide explains that meta descriptions are “occasionally” used for generating the snippet shown in the search results:
“The snippet is sourced from the actual content of the page the search result is linking to… Occasionally the snippet may be sourced from the contents of the meta description tag, which is typically a succinct, one- or two-sentence summary of the page. A good meta description is short, unique to one particular page, and includes the most relevant points of the page.”
And Google’s Meta Description Best Practices recommends:
“A meta description tag generally informs and interests users with a short, relevant summary of what a particular page is about. They are like a pitch that convince the user that the page is exactly what they’re looking for.”
Notice that both the official HTML documentation and Google do not recommend using your title tag or meta description as a place to park your keywords or for putting a call to action to get people to visit the site? Those are SEO practices that SEOs invented and it’s probably why so many title tags get rewritten, because they’re incorrectly done.
Related: Google Answers if Meta Description Matters for Rankings
The Ranking Impact Of Title Tags
Google’s John Mueller directly answered and confirmed that changing the title element maybe can impact rankings. He didn’t say anything about the title tag being a ranking factor. He just said that changing the title tag maybe can impact rankings.
Mueller’s answer confirmed that changing the title element could maybe impact rankings:
This is the question:
“We have a website with satisfying ranks and now our product added new features. We need to modify the page meta title & description, does that affect the current rankings?”
John Mueller answered that maybe changing the title tag could change the rankings in the search results.
Here’s his answer:
“Yes, or better, maybe. Changing things like titles or headings on pages can result in changes in Search.”
Why did Mueller say maybe?
He didn’t explain why.
But his answer confirms that changing your title elements doesn’t automatically cause a change in rankings.
My opinion (based on my experience) is that title elements are just content and changing your content can affect rankings.
Mueller’s answer about meta descriptions implied that it doesn’t have an affect on rankings but it could affect the snippet shown in the search results. That’s something that the digital marketing community is already on board with.
This is what he said about meta descriptions:
“Similarly, changing the meta description on a page can result in changes with how the snippet of a page is shown in Search. This is expected, and usually something that SEOs or site-owners focus on in an attempt to improve things in search.”
See also: Google Ranking Systems & Signals 2024
Title Tags Maybe Can Change Rankings
Mueller’s answer might come as a surprise to some because belief that the title tag is an important ranking factor has been a part of the SEO tradition since the beginning of SEO over 20 years ago when search engines were relatively primitive compared to today. Some in the SEO community, for whatever reason, continue the decades old tradition that title elements are a huge ranking factor.
Mueller confirmed that changing the title element might maybe impact search results, which is what some people have experienced, in either direction of rankings.
Related: Google On The SEO Impact Of Changing Page Titles Every Day
Listen to the question and answer at the 19:29 minute mark:
New: Google Now Uses Open Graph Title Tag (og:title) For Title Links
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