Influencing your title links in search results

A title link is the title of a search result on Google Search and other properties (for example, Google News) that links to the web page. Google uses a number of different sources to automatically determine the title link, but you can indicate your preferences by following our best practices for influencing title links.

Best practices for influencing title links

Title links are critical to giving users a quick insight into the content of a result and why it's relevant to their query. It's often the primary piece of information people use to decide which result to click, so it's important to use high-quality title text on your web pages.

• Make sure every page on your site has a title specified in the But displaying that text in the
• Make it clear which text is the main title for the page. Google looks at various sources when creating title links, including the main visual title, heading elements, and other large and prominent text, and it can be confusing if multiple headings carry the same visual weight and prominence. Consider ensuring that your main title is distinctive from other text on a page and stands out as being the most prominent on the page (for example, using a larger font, putting the title text in the first visible

  element on the page, etc).

• Be careful about disallowing search engines from crawling your pages. Using the robots.txt protocol on your site can stop Google from crawling your pages, but it may not always prevent them from being indexed. For example, Google may index your page if we discover it by following a link from someone else's site. If we don't have access to the content on your page, we will rely on off-page content to generate the title link, such as anchor text from other sites. To prevent a URL from being indexed, you can use the noindex rule.
• Use the same language and writing system (meaning, the script or alphabet for a given language) as the primary content on your pages. For example, if a page is written in Hindi, make sure to also write the

  Google Search looks at information in header elements or other large and prominent text on the page to produce a title link:

  Product Name | Site Name

  Obsolete

  In this example, the page has a large, visible title that says "2021 admissions criteria", and the

  Google Search tries to determine if the

  Google Search can detect the season number used in large, prominent title text and insert the season number in the title link:

  Season 1 - My so-called amazing TV show

  Season 2 - My so-called amazing TV show

  Season 3 - My so-called amazing TV show

  No clear main title

  When there's more than one large, prominent heading, and it isn't clear which text is the main title of the page. For example, a page has two or more headings that use the same styling or heading level. If Google Search detects that there are multiple large, prominent headings, it may use the first heading as the text for the title link. Consider ensuring that your main heading is distinctive from other text on a page and stands out as being the most prominent on the page (for example, using a larger font, putting the title text in the first visible

  element on the page, etc).

  Mismatch of writing system or language used in