Google has updated its title links search developer documentation to add that Google Search may use your og:title meta tag title for your title link in the Google Search results. The OG title is normally used by social sharing sites for the title of your posts, but Google may also use it for the title of your search result snippets in Google.
A new bullet point was added to the How title links in Google Search are created section that reads, "Google Search uses the following sources to automatically determine title links:"
The new bullet that was added is:
- Content in og:title meta tags
You can compare it to the old document to see that bullet point was not there.
Google said, it added "og:title to the list of title link sources." "Google Search can use content within og:title meta tags to automatically generate title links," Google also wrote.
Here is the full list of elements Google may use to come up with your title link for the Google Search results:
- Content in title elements
- Main visual title shown on the page
- Heading elements, such as h1 elements
- Content in og:title meta tags
- Other content that's large and prominent through the use of style treatments
- Other text contained in the page
- Anchor text on the page
- Text within links that point to the page
- WebSite structured data
Here is a screenshot of the bullet point added to the documentation:
Here is an illustration of the title element in the Google Search results snippet, the text that says "How to make crispy fried eggs":
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