There are a lot of people asking if the title/header change Google made on August 17th has any impact on rankings. Like, is Google uses the new title it itself generated for ranking purposes. The answer is no, there was no ranking change with this – as I wrote originally.
I did cover this last week, but it was in the big Google announcement about this change and was likely overlooked.
The clearest response from a Googler on this question was from John Mueller of Google who said “no” this does not impact rankings:
No
— ???? John ???? (@JohnMu) August 28, 2021
Kevin Indig asked “If Google rewrites my title, does it take keywords in the title into account when it measures the relevance of a page based on the new or old title?” John said “no” as you can see above. John then added later “This is purely a display change. This is not meant to change rankings. It’s easier to separate things out for testing.”
This is purely a display change. This is not meant to change rankings. It’s easier to separate things out for testing. That said, we make ranking changes all the time too, so I wouldn’t assume you won’t see ranking changes, it’s just that they’re not due to this :).
— ???? John ???? (@JohnMu) August 29, 2021
Danny Sullivan from Google said it originally in a more confusing way. Well, it was confusing because Google’s new title thing uses the content on the page a lot more for the title. Google’s ranking system uses your content on your page. So technically, content on your page does impact rankings. But the title change is a display change and was not related to rankings.
