Why Google changes your page title and how to prevent it with an SEO title check

You wrote a careful title for your page and, when you search for it, Google shows a different one. It is not a bug: Google changes the title when it thinks other text describes the page better. According to its documentation, generating the result's title is "completely automated" and takes into account both the page's content and references to it on the web. The good news is that the title you write is still the main source: Google uses the <title> element around 87% of the time, according to its Search Central blog.

87%

Times Google uses your title element

according to Google

61.6%

Titles rewritten in the Zyppy study

fully or partially

99.9%

Titles over 70 characters rewritten

almost all

Source: Google Search Central Blog (2021) and Zyppy, 80,959 titles (2022)

View the data as a table

Times Google uses your title element	87% | according to Google
Titles rewritten in the Zyppy study	61.6% | fully or partially
Titles over 70 characters rewritten	99.9% | almost all

Why do the figures not match? Google's 87% counts the times it uses the content of the title element, even if it shortens it. Zyppy's 61.6% includes any change, however small, such as removing the brand or a separator.

Where Google gets the new title

When Google changes the title, it does not make it up. It uses text from your own page or from the web, in this order from the official documentation:

1. The content of the <title> element.
2. The main visual title on the page.
3. Headings, such as the H1.
4. The og:title tag.
5. Other large and prominent text through style treatments.
6. Other text on the page.
7. Anchor text on the page.
8. Text within links that point to the page.
9. WebSite structured data.

Google notes that it needs to recrawl the page to notice changes, which can take "a few days to a few weeks".

The 5 reasons Google changes the title

Cause	Example	What to do
Half-empty title	"| Company name" (the text before the pipe is missing)	Complete the title with what the page offers
Obsolete title	"Admissions 2025" on a page that now covers 2026	Update the date every year
Inaccurate title	A title that promises something the page does not have	Describe the actual content
Repeated boilerplate	The same long phrase in every title of a group of pages	Keep only what changes on each page
Keyword stuffing	"Sneakers, cheap sneakers, sneakers Chile"	Use the keyword once

Length adds to these causes. Google truncates the title "as needed, typically to fit the device width". In the Zyppy study, titles over 60 characters were rewritten in more than 76% of cases.

What we saw on 27 Chilean home pages

In our analysis of 27 Chilean home pages we found several of these cases: a title that starts with a pipe and no text before it (half-empty); five titles with vague words like "Inicio" (Home) or "¡Bienvenidos!" (Welcome!), which Google asks site owners to avoid; and 7 titles over 60 characters, the longest at 104. These are easy-to-fix details that make it more likely that Google changes the title.

How to keep Google from changing the title

1. Run an SEO title check on your important pages with our SEO title check: it shows the exact title Google reads and its length.
2. Align the title with the H1. If they say the same thing, Google has fewer reasons to look for other text.
3. Avoid brackets and too many pipes. Zyppy found that Google rewrote 77.6% of titles with brackets and removed or replaced the pipe in 41% of cases.
4. Check the preview in our SERP simulator before publishing.

✓▣Free toolFree SEO Checker: on-page SEO analyzerPaste a URL and check its title, meta description, headings, canonical, languages, images and links.Use tool →

If Google still changes the title when you meet every point, review the anchor text of links pointing to your page and the H1: they are the sources Google uses as alternatives. For the full list of points, read how to review whether your page title is well optimized.