On Friday, as I wrote on Search Engine Land, Google has introduced two new help documents around titles and descriptions in Google Search. Most of the content is not new but there are new pieces in this content that are interesting, including Google defining the title link as the clickable link in the search results.
New help documents are named:
Link Title
Google has introduced a new term to define the clickable link in the search results as the "title link." Google wrote "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." Here is the screenshot Google used to showcase it:
What Is New
Here is what is new with the documents and what is not new with the documents.
- Moved this from a single help document to two individual documents.
- Defined this new term "title link" as explained above.
- Provided more details on how it comes up with the title link.
- Added examples of how Google may adjust title links.
Outside of that, Google did not make any changes to the best practices for writing descriptive title elements despite what people might be saying on social.
Also, the snippet control page had very limited changes, Google said the "updates were minimal structural updates; there aren't any changes to the guidelines themselves."
Either way, it is worth reviewing these two documents as a refresher, if not anything else.
Why did Google do this? I suspect over them making changes to how the titles are shown in August, then confirming the change and then scaling it back a bit in September.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
