How to write titles and meta descriptions Google keeps

Where a search result’s text comes from

Google’s Search Central documentation describes two separate systems. The title link (the blue headline) is generated automatically from several sources: the <title> element, the main visible heading, other headings and prominent text, anchor text of links to the page, and structured data. The snippet (the grey text) comes primarily from the page content, and the meta description is used when it describes the page better than any passage Google could pick.

Both can change with the query. A search that matches a specific section of a long page may show a snippet from that section, even if your meta description is excellent.

Why Google replaces a title

Search Central lists the typical problems. Toggle them on the right to see how each one changes what a result might look like:

• half-empty or missing titles, like “Home” or “Untitled”;
• obsolete titles, such as last year’s date;
• inaccurate titles that don’t reflect the page;
• micro-boilerplate: near-identical titles across a set of pages;
• no clear main title, or several headings of equal weight;
• keyword stuffing and very long titles.