Google is meticulous, and in its effort to ensure adherence to its guidelines, it sometimes makes changes to the meta titles of published content. Well… many times, specifically 76.04% of cases, according to a study recently published by SEO consultant and web developer John McAlpin.
It is worth noting that this figure remains similar (76%) in the case of YMYL content (Your Money Your Life), which highlights the search engine’s concern regarding medical, legal, financial, and other sensitive topics.
In conducting his study, McAlpin tracked thousands of keywords on websites with and without YMYL content, focusing on commercial and informational search intent, and analyzed the first 50 pages of results for each keyword to detect patterns in the modifications of meta titles applied by Google.
According to the study, Google makes changes to 76.04% of meta titles, with this percentage increasing in the case of content targeting keywords with a high search volume. For instance, when the search range is between 10,001 and 100,000, Google modifies 77.22% of the meta titles, and when it is over 100,001, it changes 79.23%.
Similarly, as the search volume increases, there is also a rise in the percentage of meta titles that include the target keyword, going from 6.86% for search ranges between 0 and 100 to 45.99% for ranges over 100,001. The overall average is 21.94%.
On average, Google removes about 2.71 words from the original meta titles of the content when displayed in its search results. Furthermore, the search engine retains only 35.02% of the original meta title.
When focusing solely on how Google behaves concerning keywords, it was found that it only removed the keyword from the meta title in 1.57% of the cases. The percentage is similarly low (1.01%) in cases where it decided to add the keyword to the meta title when it was not originally included. This indicates that Google’s motive for modifying meta titles is not to add keywords to refine these SEO elements.
A noteworthy point is that McAlpin found that 76.74% of the meta titles did not include keywords in either their original version or the modifications made by Google.
After shedding light on the overall picture, the analysis proceeds to examine specifically Google’s behavior depending on whether the meta titles relate to informational or commercial search intent content. For meta titles with an informational intent, 9,504 results were analyzed, and for commercial intent, 15,382 results.
Google modified 76.17% of the meta titles with informational intent, a figure very close to the general average (76.04%). In the case of meta titles with a commercial intent, changes were made in 75.97% of cases.
Only 5.81% of the original informational intent meta titles included the target keyword, a much lower figure than the overall data (21.94%) and even lower compared to commercial intent meta titles (31.91%).
Regarding how Google acts when modifying original meta titles that do contain the target keyword, for informational intent content, it retains this keyword in 5.35% of cases. Whereas for commercial meta titles, the figure is much higher, retaining the target keyword 30.17% of the time.
Additionally, it is worth noting that of the informational meta titles modified by Google, 93.81% did not contain keywords in either the original version or the version created by the search engine. This finding suggests that the exact match of keywords in the meta title does not weigh heavily when positioning informational content. However, this is not the case for commercial content, as only 66.17% of the meta titles that underwent variations did not include keywords in any of their versions.
Pages categorized as YMYL are those whose content has the potential to influence the well-being, health, financial stability, or safety of users. In other words, those that address medical, legal, security, financial, shopping information, etc.
In this case, 21,030 results related to this type of website were analyzed, and it was discovered that Google modified 76% of the meta titles. Conversely, for meta titles of websites whose content does not fall into the YMYL category, out of 3,856 results studied, Google applied variations in 76.27% of the cases.
20.83% of the original meta titles of YMYL websites included the target keyword, and Google chose to keep the target keyword in 19.63% of cases. In contrast, for websites without YMYL content, 28.01% of the original meta titles contained the target keyword, which was retained 26.35% of the time.
On the opposite end, we find that 77.68% of meta titles modified by Google for YMYL websites did not contain the target keyword in either their original version or the version created by the search engine. This figure is slightly lower for modified meta titles of non-YMYL websites (71.64%).
While Google gives slightly more importance to placing keywords in the meta titles of non-YMYL content, for content that falls into this category, it focuses on clarity and precision rather than keyword optimization.
Furthermore, focusing on specific sectors within YMYL content, it is observed that Google puts special emphasis on the modification of meta titles for content in the health industry, as it altered 76.51%. A percentage higher than the average for YMYL content (76%) and the general average (76.04%).
Additionally, the search engine retained the target keyword in 21.75% of cases where the original health content meta titles already included it. In the finance sector, this only occurred 13.69% of the time, and in legal, it was 15.89%.
Within YMYL content, the legal sector has the highest rate for keyword elimination (3.8%), and the finance sector presents the highest percentage of modified meta titles that do not include keywords in any version (84.08%).
The study has identified the most common situations in which Google decides to modify meta titles.
McAlpin identified several patterns in those meta titles that did not experience variations by Google:
Photo: GPT-4o
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