

Startup Title Junk - danecjensen
http://cam.ly/blog/2010/12/startup-title-junk/

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patio11
People pay me money for this, and I didn't know that trick. Thanks.

As long as we're all here obsessing on title tags:

Apples, Oranges, Potatoes | Farmly

is my go-to template for a title tag. You'll find in very competitive
verticals the title is more optimized and less English, e.g. by not having the
natural "and" before Potatoes.

Companies not dependent on rankings for customers acquisition can use the
title tag to compete for CTR on the SERP. This is most relevant to companies
with very recognizable brands. e.g. see whatever Amazon's title is now. Almost
everybody will maximize for search engines on leaf node pages.

~~~
dfabulich
You didn't know about that Opensearch trick because it's not actually true...
it doesn't really work. Google acquires page titles from a variety of sources,
including Dmoz, domain name, and inbound links.

For example: Search for [msnbc], and it shows up as “msnbc.com” … title tag:
“Breaking News, Weather, Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Politics,
Travel, Science, Technology, Local, US & World News – msnbc.com”

[new yorker] shows up as “The New Yorker” … title tag: “National and world
news, Profiles, culture, reviews, fiction, poetry : The New Yorker”

[redfin] shows up as “Redfin” … title tag: “Search Homes for Sale & Find Real
Estate Agents Who Put You First | Redfin”

None of those pages have opensearch documents.

~~~
danecjensen
You are correct. I knew that google was showing brands like the redfin
example, but when I saw the opensearch xml document, I assumed it was a way to
relay more meta information to google.

It appears that the actual purpose of the opensearch xml document is to
describe the _search engine_ which exists on the homepage of airbnb.com. That
explains why more sites don't do it. It isn't actually relevant unless you are
running a custom search engine.

We have updated the blog post, and I'm sorry for the confusion about this
point. Still, I very much believe in the takeaway message that it is important
to craft a strong title for your website.

~~~
slewis
Please put an edit at the top of the article in addition to the one at the
bottom. This article has the potential to waste the time of those who don't
read all the way through.

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al_james
Everybody who is diving off to take advantage of this trick, _stop_ , its not
true.

The opensearch protocol describes the onsite search interface, so browsers
(that support it) can add that search engine as an option. So, in effect, the
opensearch link on the AirBnB sist is just saying "hey, if you want you can
access the AirBnB search engine straight from your browser".

It has absolutely nothing to do with how google (etc.) index and display your
site in their search results.

Instead, the AirBnB homepage comes up as 'AirBnB' (mostly) because it has a
huge number of trusted incoming links containing hypertext 'AirBnB'. Google
treats these as kind of 'alternative title text suggestions', and if you get
enough they can override the actual page text in some cases.

So the trick is (as always) to link build.

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thegyppo
I don't think this has anything to do with the Opensearch.xml file, from what
I've seen Google is also doing this manually.

Previously they have been using the title from DMOZ but, Check out our startup
in the SERPS "StoreCrowd" the branded search returns the brand name in the
results. However our title reads more like "Coupon Codes, Deals & Discounts
for Online Stores"

We launched an Australian version with an optimised title tag but it appears
in branded search as "StoreCrowd Australia".

Neither sites are in DMOZ nor do we use the Opensearch protocol.

~~~
steveklabnik
Google does do some of this, but it's not fully automatic. You still mark up
your content, but it makes it easy for them to pull it out:
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introduci...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-
rich-snippets.html)

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markbao
Awesome. I never knew you could do stuff like this. We need more articles like
this one on HN.

------
there
i had somewhat the opposite problem: my site was showing up on yahoo's search
with a weird title, something i've never had as my title and certainly not
anywhere in my html.

i emailed them and they replied saying, " _The title and description listed in
the Yahoo! Search results can come from many different places, only one of
which is the actual metadata in the page itself. The title and description can
also come from descriptions on other websites which link to yours or directory
services such as the Yahoo! Directory or other third party directory
services._ "

i had to add "noodp, noydir" to the meta robots tag on my site to prevent this
from happening.

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zach
Fantastic. Applying it to my site right now.

I'm a little humbled to realize I've stopped viewing source as much as I did
five years ago.

I really should do it more often so I can see cool things like this,
especially for sites with great SEO.

Love the random Wag's Revue shout-out. I happened to meet one of the editors
at E3 and discovered it that way, but via Google would've been a lot easier.
It deserves more notice.

------
Xuzz
This seems backwards to me. Shouldn't the "extended" description be the one
hidden from the user's title bar, not the short one?

~~~
heyrhett
It's a little bit confusing. The "extended" description does, in fact, show up
in the title bar. The short one only shows up in the google search link.

The point is, imagine you're trying to get to the Airbnb website, and you're
the type of user who is going to type "airbnb" (or the closest thing you can
remember to that) into google. When google returns the Airbnb url, the optimal
thing for them to display is "Airbnb". If they returned the extended title, it
would blend in more with the other search results, and it might take a user
longer to find it.

The title plays an important role with the your whole customer user experience
if you consider the role it plays in getting them to your page.

By providing flexible search anchor tag text, you can hint at google about
your service relevance, while also targeting users who are already familiar
with your brand.

~~~
thristian
There's two pieces of text relevant: the "extended" description that
introduces the site to people who don't already know it (such as search-engine
users), and the "short" description that has the site's actual branding for
people who are already familiar with it.

In an ideal world, the <title> element would contain the short description,
for bookmarking purposes, while the OpenSearch metadata would contain the
extended description for search engines. It's kind of unfortunate that it's
the opposite way around.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Use user-agent or javascript to do this. Seems like a good idea. I'd much
rather see "HN | Startup Title Ju..." than "Hacker News | Startu..." in my
tab. Especially if I'm trying to remember which HN tab I'm trying to get back
to.

(edit: actually "HN | Startup Title Junk" all fits in the tab with my font
config)

~~~
Xuzz
Or even "Startup Title Junk | Hacker News" -- that keeps the full title, and
makes it show up right in your tab.

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enoptix
This is very interesting. There are a lot of brand-sensitive client types such
as healthcare organizatons and higher education who would love this. I do have
one question though.

According to Wikipedia's list of software and search engines that support
OpenSearch, only Google Chrome is on the list. [1]

Google as a search engine is not listed. The screenshot in the article is also
in Chrome.

I wonder if this feature is supported in Firefox or IE.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSearch>

edit: tested in Firefox, it works. this is great!

~~~
zck
It works for me, Firefox 3.6 on Linux. Searching "airbnb" has the shortname
shown:
[http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs...](http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=Airbnb&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)
, while searching "vacation rental for the night" has the standard title
shown:
[http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs...](http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=vacation+rental+for+the+night&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

~~~
kristofferR
It didn't work for me, I got the "Vacation rentals, private rooms, sublets by
the night - Accommodations on Airbnb" as page title entering from both
searches.

Using Safari on OS X

------
gommm
Very interesting, I didn't know about Opensearch. I'll spend my afternoon
setting it up on my websites...

Now if browsers and bookmarking service start using the Short name for the
title bar, we will have reinvented the meta keywords tag :-)

------
poundy
Bing does not change its title for airbnb
<http://www.bing.com/search?q=airbnb>

Cool trick!

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Aegean
How do we increase the chance to get sitelinks to show up on google?

~~~
slig
You have to the THE relevant authority on that keyword. FYI, you can check
your sites on Google Webmasters tool.

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codemechanic
Great. Thanks for the tips

