What is a page's meta title?

The meta title is not the product name you read in large type on your product page, which is the h1 heading, and it is not the meta description, the summary that can show up beneath it in results. It is the title the page gives itself in the code, and the one Google starts from for the blue link someone sees before deciding whether to enter your store. The name misleads: it is not a meta tag but the title element of the head. The industry calls it a meta title because it is edited in the same place as the meta description, and Shopify, for example, calls it the page title in the search engine listing preview.⁠^{[1]Shopify Help Center. Adding keywords for SEO to your Shopify store}

How it works

What the standard says. The title element represents the document's title or name, goes in the head (head) and there can be no more than one per document. The HTML standard adds a recommendation worth its weight in gold for a store: authors should use titles that identify the document even out of context, for example in history, in bookmarks or in search results. Its example is clear: a page can have a heading that says only "Introduction", because it makes sense in its context, but its title has to say what the whole page is about.⁠^{[2]WHATWG. HTML Standard, 4.2.2 The title element} On a product page the same applies: the h1 can be "Summit 20", and the title has to say it is a backpack.

What Google does with it. Google calls the title of the result that links to the page a title link, and it generates it completely automatically, taking into account the content of the page and references to it around the web. Its sources are several: the content of the title element, the main visible title on the page, headings such as the h1, the og:title tag, other large and prominent text, the text of links pointing to the page and WebSite structured data.⁠^{[3]Google Search Central. Influencing your title links in search results} The title is the first on the list, but not the only one.

When it changes it. Google explains which problems lead it to show other text, and all four have a version in a store:⁠^{[3]Google Search Central. Influencing your title links in search results}

• Half-empty titles. A title that says only "| Store name" is completed with the heading or with prominent text from the page, until it reads "Product name | Store name".
• Obsolete titles. If the title says one year and the page another, Google uses the one shown on the page.
• Inaccurate titles. If the title does not reflect what is on the page, it is corrected. Google's example: a page whose title lists "Giant stuffed animals, teddy bears, polar bears" ends up as "Stuffed animals".
• Micro-boilerplate text. When many pages share the same title, Google adds what tells them apart.

The recommendations. Every page should have a title, the text should be descriptive and concise, keywords should not be repeated (a few descriptive terms help, but there is no reason to repeat the same ones) and there should not be identical boilerplate text on every page. The brand goes in concisely: at the beginning or the end, separated with a hyphen, a colon or a vertical bar.⁠^{[3]Google Search Central. Influencing your title links in search results}

Length. There is no length limit for the title, but the title link is truncated in results when needed, typically to fit the device width.⁠^{[3]Google Search Central. Influencing your title links in search results} The figure that circulates comes from the platforms: Shopify lets you write up to 70 characters and advises staying at 60 to avoid cut-off titles. If the field is left empty, the theme uses the store name followed by the content title, or the other way around.⁠^{[1]Shopify Help Center. Adding keywords for SEO to your Shopify store} What is useful about that figure is the order: what comes first is what reaches the screen whole.

In a store

Four possible titles for the same product page. It is a fictional example: the store and the product are invented to compare the four approaches against what Google says.

Source for the right-hand column: the problems Google describes in its guide.⁠^{[3]Google Search Central. Influencing your title links in search results} In the code, the last one looks like this:

<head>
  <title>Summit 20 L Waterproof Urban Backpack | Summit Shop</title>
</head>

In a large catalog, the specific title is written with a template that combines product fields (brand, name, the detail that sets it apart), which is why a well-written title starts from well-stored data. Clione generates each product's meta title with a template you control, by default the brand, the name and the SKU, and before publishing it shows the value it is going to write next to the AI's suggestion.

How to check it

1. Open the source code of a published product page and search for <title>. There has to be exactly one, and its text has to be the one you saved in the dashboard.⁠^{[2]WHATWG. HTML Standard, 4.2.2 The title element}
2. Compare the titles of three product pages in the same category. If only one word changes or nothing does, Google treats them as boilerplate text.⁠^{[3]Google Search Central. Influencing your title links in search results}
3. Search for the product page on Google and compare the result's link with your title. If it differs, check whether yours has any of the problems Google corrects: half-empty, obsolete, inaccurate or repeated.⁠^{[3]Google Search Central. Influencing your title links in search results}
4. Look at the empty field. In Shopify, a product page with no title of its own in the search engine listing inherits the store name and the content name according to the theme.⁠^{[1]Shopify Help Center. Adding keywords for SEO to your Shopify store} Decide whether that is what you want.
5. In Search Console, look at the CTR of product pages with many impressions. A low CTR at a good position is the sign that the result, title and snippet, is not convincing.

Related concept: meta description

The meta description also lives in the head and is not seen on the page either, but it does a different job: it is a summary the search engine may show under the link, and Google uses it only sometimes. The meta title is the starting point of the link itself, the line you click: it is the first of the sources Google uses to create the title link.⁠^{[3]Google Search Central. Influencing your title links in search results} They are written together and from the same product data, but the title has to work alone, on one line and with no context, as the standard asks.⁠^{[2]WHATWG. HTML Standard, 4.2.2 The title element} The visible part of the product page, the name and the product description, is what Google uses to correct the title when it fails, so the title and the page have to say the same thing.

To keep going, the catalog and entities reading path orders the rest of the product page terms, and the entry on the category page applies the same thing to the pages that bring products together.