Title Tags Are Replaced with Site Names by Google for Homepage Results
Google currently only displays the site names in mobile search results for whole websites, such as the home page. Google appears to have ceased showing title tags in mobile search results for the whole website, such as in inquiries for a website’s name, which generally display the home page. This functionality does not work for subdomains. Only a website’s generic name is shown in smartphone searches.
As an example, the generic name of the website, Search Engine Land, is displayed on the search engine results page (SERP) for Search Engine Land on a mobile device.
The Title of The Home Page is:
For keyword searches that are not branded, the title tags seem to still be visible. The title tags appear to be displayed when a brand name and associated keywords are searched.
Why Do Google Searches Use Site Names?
Google employs site names to make it easier for users to recognize a certain website in the search results. In addition to English, French, Japanese, and German, this new functionality will be made available in other languages over the coming several months.
Ineffectiveness of New Features
When looking for a compound word domain name like “Search Engine Land” and “searchengineland,” the same search results that included the new site names as the title link are displayed. However, a search using the domain HubSpot returns the old version of the search results with the title tag. A search for Hub Spot that includes a space between the two terms returns the name of the website.
A New Site Names Feature for Structured Data
Google recommends using the WebSite’s structured data type. Because Google already understood that a website was a website and didn’t need structured data to know that it was indexing a website, it was previously believed that the WebSite structured data site had no function.
This has changed because Google now uses the “name” field of the WebSite structured data type, in particular, to identify the site name of a website.
How Does It Affect Sites With Different Names?
The value of the website’s structured data comes from the ability to tell Google the website’s other name.
The following is how the structured data for the optional name is presented:
More Than Structured Data is used by Google
In addition to structured data, Google also takes into account on-page, off-page, and Metadata information when deciding what a web page’s site name is, as stated in the Google site name rules.
Using the following criteria, Google analyses the domain name:
- Structured data on the website
- Headings (H1, H2, etc) (H1, H2, etc.)
- Metadata from the Open Graph Protocol, notably the og: site name
Names of Google Sites
The new Google search feature that shows site names on mobile devices is attractive. There should be less clutter in the SERPs for brand name searches on the main page. Even yet, we might envision some individuals complaining about the title tag’s ineffectiveness in these searches.
