What is a title tag?

A title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of a web page. A page’s title tag is displayed as part of the search snippet in a search engine results page (SERP). It appears as the clickable headline for the search result and is important for user experience, SEO, and social sharing. The title tag of a web page is meant to be an accurate and concise description of a page's content.

Enter your title tag below to see how it's likely to appear in Google's search results:

Why won't Google use my title tag?Sometimes, Google may display a title that doesn't match what you've marked up in your HTML. This can be frustrating, but there's no easy way to force the search engine to use the title you've defined. When this happens, there are three likely explanations:

1. Your title is keyword-stuffedAs discussed above, if you try to stuff your title with keywords (sometimes called "over-optimization"), Google may choose to simply rewrite it. Google also seems to be sensitive to phrases patched together with delimiters, such as pipes (|). For this and many other reasons, consider tuning up your title to be more useful to search users.

2. Your title is too longIt used to be that Google would simply cut off a long title. While inconvenient at times, that was at least predictable! More recently, Google has begun completely rewriting long titles, taking a portion of the title from the middle or using other text on the page. While you shouldn’t panic over long titles, it’s important to be mindful of how those titles appear in SERPs.

3. Your title has relevance issuesWe covered the obvious cases, like a page titled “Home,” but Google may rewrite any title that doesn’t seem to match searcher intent or that’s loaded with marketing jargon or phrases that don’t reflect the content. These rewrites aren’t restricted to keyword stuffing or obvious spam. Make sure your titles accurately reflect the corresponding content.

4. You have an alternate titleIn some cases, if you include alternate title data, such as a meta tag for Facebook or Twitter, Google may choose to use that title instead. Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if this creates an undesirable display title, you might want to rewrite the alternate title data.