Google announced making an algorithmic update for title links. This update targets multilingual and transliterated titles to ensure the title link is in the same language or script as that of the actual page or content.
In case you missed it, Google started rewriting titles last year, which initially didn’t go well with the SEO community, and this current update is seen as a further improvement to the algorithm.
Google’s Official Announcement
Google published a blog post to announce the improvements they have made to the title links algorithm. This algorithmic improvement is for pages where the title is in a different language or script from its content.
With this new update, Google targets pages with multilingual titles and Latin scripted titles. In these cases, Google would now go beyond the title elements provided to choose a suitable title in the same language or script as that of the document.
Multilingual titles
Multilingual titles are those that include the same phrase in different languages. Google quoted an example:
गीतांजलि की जीवनी – Geetanjali Biography in Hindi
Here the title includes the same phrase in multiple languages (Hindi and English). Given that the title includes multiple languages and the document is written in Hindi, Google would try to remove the inconsistency and display the title in the language of the original content (which is Hindi in this case).
Latin Scripted Titles
In another case, Google tries to identify titles that are transliterated into different scripts or alphabets. Google quoted an example of a page title where the content is in Hindi’s Devanagari script while the title is transliterated to use Latin characters, as shown below.
jis desh me holi kheli jati hai
For such instances, Google would look for an alternative title that uses the same script found predominantly on the page and would rewrite the title as:
जिस देश में होली खेली जाती है
What’s Next – Dealing With This Update
This update is very specific to pages that make use of the multilingual or transliterated titles and if your site includes such titles, you may notice a change in the CTR in the upcoming days. In case you come across rewritten titles that are not so relevant, you can leave your feedback in the Google Search Central forum.
