Google Search Showing Fewer Brand Names In Search Result Titles

Google may be showing less site names and brand names in the title of the search results snippet. Yes, Google has a sitename and favicon change for the search results, so maybe Google is less likely to repeat the site name in the title of the search result snippet because of that new search result layout design?

Google may be showing fewer site names and brand names in the title of the search results snippet. I received a couple of complaints about this and now the Screaming Frog team also noticed it. So I think this is legit and maybe it will stick, maybe it won’t but SEOs and site owners are noticing the lack of site names in the title of the snippet.

For example, search for Air Jordan shoes return Nike.com and as you can see from the snippet, it just says “Jordan Shoes” in the title. Yes, the favicon and site name are above, but the title tag says “Jordan Shoes. Nike.com” but Google just shows “Jordan Shoes” in the snippet.

Similar with this American Airline snippet, it shows “Find New York to Miami flights” but the title tag says “American Airlines® – Find New York to Miami flights.”

Here is what Screaming Frog posted:

Looks like over the last week, Google has started showing less brand names at the end of SERP titles. Makes sense with site names already. pic.twitter.com/blh0d4Thd4

— Screaming Frog (@screamingfrog) March 28, 2023

The logic makes sense:

Yup, not really needed as much with site names!

— Screaming Frog (@screamingfrog) March 28, 2023

John Mueller thinks that is why:

Isn’t this just a side-effect of showing the site name a line above the title? https://t.co/v1RMUGoPyK

— johnmu likes 🥚 staplers 🥚 (@JohnMu) March 28, 2023

In any event, this may be happening intentionally and SEOs are noticing.

Forum discussion at Twitter.