In an update to its search documentation, Google has expanded the list of sources it uses to generate title links in search results.
Google now includes the og:title meta tag as one of the elements it considers when automatically creating title links for web pages.
Title links, which appear as clickable headings to search results, give people a quick introduction to a web page and how well it matches their search.
Google’s title link generation system has long relied on various on-page elements. Adding og:title expands the list of criteria Google uses.
Understanding and:title
The og:title tag allows you to specify a title for your content that may differ from the traditional HTML title tag. This can be useful for optimizing how a page is displayed when shared on social networks or now in search results.
And:title is part of the Open Graph protocol, a set of meta tags developed by Facebook that enables any page to become a rich object in social graphs.
Although used to control how content is displayed on social media platforms, Google’s inclusion of this tag in its title link sources indicates a broader use of Open Graph data.
Impact on SEO and content strategy
With this update, you may need to pay more attention to og:title tags to ensure they accurately represent page content while remaining engaging for searchers.
Google’s documentation now lists the following sources for automatically determining title links:
- Content in
elements - The main visual title shown on the page
- Heading elements, such as
- Content in and:title meta tags
- Other large and prominent text through style treatments
- Other page content
- Anchor text on the page
- Text in links that point to the page
- Website structured data
Although Google says the generation of title links is automated, understanding the sources it uses can help you influence how pages appear in searches.
Best practices remain unchanged
Google’s best practices for title links remain largely unchanged. The company recommends creating unique, descriptive titles for each page, avoiding keyword stuffing, and ensuring that titles accurately reflect page content.
Note that changes to these elements may take time to be reflected in search results as pages need to be re-crawled and re-processed.
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