How does Google choose titles for search results

Hey everybody.

We got a couple questions about titles.

So we wanted to do a video about how Google selects the titles that we show in our snippets in our search results.

So the first question came from Christian in Madrid.

And the question was, what criteria does Google use to change the title it shows in the search depending on the query?

And then we also got a question from Nepal that asked, why Google search results doesn't show the current meta title of the web page?

And they were saying that they showed and H1 tag from the HTML page.

So basically whenever we try to choose the title, or decide which title to show in a search result, we're looking for a concise description of the page that's also relevant to the query.

So there's a few criteria that we look at.

Number one, we try to find something that's relatively short.

Number two, we want to have a good description of the page and, ideally, the site that the page is on.

And number three, we also want to know that it's relevant to the query somehow.

So if your existing HTML title fits those criteria, then oftentimes the default will be to just use your title.

So in an ideal world, it would accurately describe the page and the site.

It would be relevant to the query.

And it would also be somewhat short.

Now, if your current title, as best as we can tell, doesn't match that, then a user who types in something and doesn't see something related to their query, or doesn't have a good idea about exactly what this page is going to be, is less likely to click on it.

So in those kinds of cases, we might dig a little bit deeper.

We might use content on your page.

We might look at the links that point to your page and incorporate some text from those links.

We might even use the Open Directory Project to try to help figure out what a good title would be.

But the thing to bear in mind is in each of these cases, we're looking for the best title that will help a user assess whether that's what they're looking for.

So if you want to control the title that's being shown, you can't completely control it, but you can try to anticipate what's a user going to type.

And then make sure that your title reflects not only something about that query or the page that you're on, but also includes sort of the site that you're on or tries to give some context, so the user knows what they're going to get whenever they're clicking on it.