Posted Thursday at 02:00 PM1 day comment_12694 In the first quarter of 2025, I ran a data study to understand how often Google changes title tags – and why. While it’s well known that Google frequently rewrites titles, I wanted to dig deeper: What factors trigger these changes? Are some pages more prone to rewrites than others? Most SEO professionals develop their own title tag strategies based on a mix of Google’s guidance, industry advice, and personal experience. Yet, when I searched for actual data on how and why Google modifies title tags, I found only one notable case study – by Cyrus Shepard in 2023. That left me with more questions: Does search volume play a role? What about YMYL content? Could brand name usage make a difference? I decided to run my own study. What follows is a summary of my findings, highlighting some of the most interesting patterns I uncovered. Methodology For this case study, I conducted weeks’ worth of keyword research across different categories. YMYL vs. non-YMYL industries. High search volume vs. low search volume. Informational vs. commercial intent. The keyword set ended in the 30,000 range, which I had to pare down for cost reasons and because so many variations produced the same results for the same intent. Some argue that SEO data studies require millions of keywords for statistical significance, but that overlooks the reality that many of those keywords are low-quality or produce highly similar results. I’ve carefully curated this keyword list to ensure that we’re achieving a wide variety of intents and categories and that the quantity of keywords is balanced across categories. For tools, I used: Advanced Web Ranking to track rankings because it offers: An affordable pricing model. API access. Title tag data as returned by Google during fetch. Screaming Frog to crawl each result page on the same day, capturing the original title tags. Any errors in crawling were excluded from the data study results. Only the top 20 search results were included in the analysis. Key quantitative findings Google changes title tags 76% of the time. That’s a 25% increase from Shepard’s study just two years prior. Granted, we used a different dataset and methodology. However, the study is not that complicated, so I believe the comparison is still valid. Keyword usage Among the title tags that were changed, 77% didn’t include the page’s perceived focus keyword. This finding is surprising, as you’d expect pages ranking on the first two pages of search results to include focus keywords in their title tags. One possible explanation is that some of these titles were written with a more creative, reader-first approach rather than a traditional SEO strategy. As a caveat, I used AI to identify the focus keyword for each webpage and then manually reviewed the extracted keyword for accuracy. This presents a small margin of error but is still accurate. How much was changed? Of the title tags that were changed, only 35% of the original words were retained. This is expected, given the brevity of title tags. Analysis by search intent Commercial For commercial pages, keywords are definitely still a big deal. Almost a third (31.91%) of original commercial titles include the target keyword, and Google mostly respects this, keeping keywords at nearly the same rate (31.31%) in what they display. When Google does mess with keyword-containing titles, it keeps those keywords about 30% of the time. The cool part? Google hardly ever adds (1.44%) or removes (2.23%) keywords from commercial titles. This tells me they’re not trying to mess with our keyword strategy – they’re mostly just making titles clearer and better structured. Informational For informational content, it’s a whole different ball game. Only about 6% of original titles even contain target keywords – that’s five times less than commercial content. When Google changes these titles, they barely keep the keywords (just 5.35% of the time), and most (93.81%) of modified informational titles don’t have keywords in either version. This suggests that Google cares little about exact keyword matching for informational content and is way more focused on creating titles that clearly explain the content’s topic. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. Business email address Sign me up! Processing... See terms. Analysis by YMYL status YMYL content: Google’s safety net in action When it comes to “Your Money, Your Life” (YMYL) content, Google appears to have trust issues – not that I blame them. Before analyzing any results, I suspected that Google would refrain from changing title tags from YMYL pages. But I couldn’t be more wrong. The data shows they’re modifying 76% of YMYL title tags, right in line with the global average. But here’s where it gets interesting: only about 21% of YMYL original titles include target keywords, and Google keeps keywords in just 19.63% of the titles it changes. Most telling? Up to 77.68% of changed YMYL titles don’t have keywords in either version. This makes perfect sense. For content that could impact someone’s health, finances, or legal situations, Google seems far more concerned with making sure titles are accurate and helpful rather than keyword-optimized. Non-YMYL content: A bit more keyword-friendly For non-YMYL content, Google’s still changing titles at the same rate (76.27%), but the keyword story differs. About 28% of original non-YMYL titles include target keywords, significantly higher than YMYL content. When Google changes these titles, it’s much more likely to preserve keywords intact, in 26.35% of cases. And while 71.64% of changed titles lack keywords in either version, that’s still lower than with YMYL content. It seems Google’s a bit more relaxed when the stakes are lower. For content about hobbies, entertainment, or other non-critical topics, they appear more willing to let keyword optimization strategies slide, perhaps because the potential harm from misleading content is less serious. YMYL vs. Non-YMYL: The trust factor The biggest difference between YMYL and non-YMYL handling isn’t how often Google changes titles – that’s remarkably consistent. It’s in how they treat keywords and optimization signals. For non-YMYL content, Google seems to give SEOs a longer leash, allowing for more keyword-focused title strategies. But for YMYL content, there’s a clear shift toward prioritizing accuracy, clarity, and user protection over SEO considerations. This makes sense from Google’s perspective. It can afford to be more lenient with your movie review blog. Still, when it comes to medical advice or financial guidance, it steps in more aggressively to ensure titles accurately represent content. The key takeaway? For YMYL sites, focus less on keyword-stuffing titles and more on creating clear, accurate headlines that reflect your content. Google will change your titles anyway, so you might as well work with their system rather than against it. Why Google changes your title tags (even though you worked so hard on them) The data study reveals several clear patterns in how and why Google modifies title tags in search results. Brand name removal: The title tag trimmer The most common change Google makes is simply removing your brand name. This happens in 63% of all modified titles. Google’s saying, “Thanks, but no thanks” to your carefully placed brand mentions, especially in health-related searches. They seem to prioritize the core content information over your brand, particularly when: Space is tight. They don’t think your brand adds substantial value to searchers. If the query isn’t specifically brand-focused, your brand name is often the first thing to go. Clarity makeover: Making titles make sense About 30% of Google’s title changes are about making your titles more readable or better aligned with user expectations. They’re converting vague statements into clear questions (which may drive higher CTR), making value propositions more obvious, and using more direct language. Google frequently rephrases titles to match how users actually think about topics rather than how you’ve framed them. It’s like Google is your editor, cleaning up your headlines to make them more user-friendly. Length control: Too long, too short, just right Google has no patience for title tag extremes. They’ll truncate overly long titles and expand super-short ones. About 8% of changes fall into this category. The most dramatic examples are those ridiculous SEO-stuffed titles (looking at you, dog bite attorneys with 500+ word titles listing every city and ZIP code) or those uninformative one-word titles that tell users nothing. Google doesn’t seem to care about length, but more about clarity. Dig deeper: What should the title tag length be in 2025? Intent matching: Giving users what they want Google frequently modifies titles to align with user search intent, particularly for commercial queries. They will: Emphasize commercial elements for shopping-related searches. Add qualifying terms that match user expectations. Remove unnecessary fluff that doesn’t serve the primary intent. It’s all about ensuring the title delivers what the searcher is looking for. YMYL: Handling with care For YMYL content, Google takes title accuracy very seriously. While my data didn’t show evidence of this being about content accuracy or potentially harmful information, there were clear patterns: Brand names get stripped. Complex titles get simplified. Unnecessary descriptive elements disappear. Google standardizes title structure particularly for commercial/transactional queries in sensitive categories like health, finance, and legal. Generic title rescue: Adding missing specificity When websites use vague titles like “Our products” or “Nutrition information,” Google adds specificity that helps users understand what they’ll find. This: Improves click-through rates by creating titles that align better with search intent. Sets appropriate expectations about page content. Helps pages compete against more descriptive competitor titles. It’s Google’s way of saying, “Let me fix that for you, since you couldn’t be bothered to write a proper title.” Understanding Google’s title tag rewrites With Google changing over 76% of title tags across the board, we need to accept that creating the perfect title tag is: Less about controlling exactly what shows up in the SERPs. More about guiding Google toward showing something that aligns with our content goals. What’s most striking is the consistency across different content types, industries, and search volumes. Whether you’re dealing with medical content, legal pages, commercial or informational intent, Google’s modification rate hovers remarkably close to that 76% mark. The differences lie not in how often Google changes titles, but in how they change them. For SEO practitioners, this means shifting our approach. Instead of fighting Google’s title modification system, we should work with it by: Creating concise, clear titles between 30-60 characters that Google will likely keep intact. Using different strategies for commercial vs. informational content (keyword-focused for commercial, clarity-focused for informational). Being extra vigilant with YMYL content titles, focusing on accuracy over keyword optimization. Avoiding unnecessary brand mentions in titles unless the query is specifically brand-focused. Testing formats that Google tends to preserve (like “How to” and list formats). The days of keyword-stuffed, brand-heavy titles designed purely for rankings are over. Google will do what it does, so our best strategy is to: Understand the patterns behind their modifications. Craft titles that guide them toward showing something that still achieves our goals, even after they’ve put their spin on it. For the full data study with additional insights, read my complete analysis here. View the full article
