Title tags and meta descriptions

Before anyone reads your page, they read two lines in the search results: the clickable title link and the snippet under it. Those lines decide whether your page gets the visit. Google builds both from your page, and you have a lot of influence over them through the <title> element and the meta description.

The title element and the title link

The title element sits in the page's <head>:

<head>
  <title>How to Clean Suede Shoes Without Damaging Them | Acme Shoe Care</title>
  <meta name="description" content="A step-by-step guide to cleaning suede at home: the tools you need, how to lift stains and water marks, and the mistakes that ruin the nap.">
</head>

Google's documentation calls the clickable headline in results a "title link". In most cases it comes straight from your <title>. Google can also generate it from other sources on the page, such as the main visible heading, other headings, anchor text of links pointing to the page, or structured data. It does this when it judges that the title element does not describe the page well.

The common triggers for a rewrite are titles that are missing, identical across many pages, stuffed with keywords, very long, or stale (for example, a year that no longer matches the content). A site that uses "Home | Acme Tools" on 400 product pages gives Google nothing to tell them apart, so Google is likely to write its own.

Writing a good title

There is no fixed character limit for titles. Long titles can be truncated on screen, so put the most important information first. A useful title is specific, unique to the page and honest about what the page contains.

Include the brand once, briefly, usually at the end after a separator. Repeating long boilerplate on every page wastes the most visible words you have.

The meta description and the snippet

The meta description is a short summary of the page. Google may use it as the snippet when it describes the page better than text pulled from the body. Google often generates the snippet from on-page text instead, especially when that text matches the specific query more closely. That is normal: the snippet can differ from one query to the next.

The meta description does not directly affect rankings. Its value is in the click. A clear description that tells the searcher exactly what they will find helps the right people choose your result. Write a unique description for important pages, summarise what is genuinely there, and avoid lists of keywords.

Controlling snippets

You can limit what Google shows with robots directives. nosnippet prevents a text snippet entirely, max-snippet:[number] caps its length, and the data-nosnippet attribute excludes a specific part of the page from snippets.

<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:160">
<p>This part can appear in snippets.</p>
<p data-nosnippet>This part will not be used in snippets.</p>

Google's documentation notes that these same preview controls also govern how your content can be shown in AI features in Search. Use them deliberately: restricting snippets reduces how much of your content can appear, which usually lowers clicks.

A quick workflow

For each important page, write a title that would make sense to someone who has never heard of your brand: what is this, and why is it the right result? Write a description that expands on the promise. Then check how they look in the results after Google recrawls. If Google keeps rewriting a title, compare your title with the main heading and the content, and close the gap.