Google Title Link Algorithm Adjustment For Multi-Language Or Transliterated Titles

Google announced that it made an algorithmic adjustment (it thinks for the better) for how it decides to display title links for those pages that use multi-language or transliterated (scripted) titles. In short, if your title tag does not match the content on the page, Google may change it to match that content.

Google said “in cases with multi-language or transliterated titles, our systems may seek alternatives that match the predominant language of the page. This is why it’s a good practice to provide a title that matches the language and/or the script of the page’s main content.”

Google added these details to the title link best practices section saying “When the script or language of the text in title elements doesn’t match the script or language of the primary text on a page. For example, when a page is in written in Hindi, but the title includes text in English or is transliterated into Latin characters. If Google detects a mismatch, it may generate a title link that better matches the primary content. Consider ensuring that the script and language matches what is most prominent on the page.”

Google gave two clear examples of this:

Latin Scripted Titles

For the scripted transliteration titles, in the case where your content is written from one language into a different language that uses a different script or alphabet, this may trigger. Google said as an example, a page title for a song written in Hindi but transliterated to use Latin characters rather than Hindi’s native Devanagari script. So the words “jis desh me holi kheli jati hai.” Google said in this case its new title algorithm tries to find an alternative title using the script that’s predominant on the page, which in this case could be “जिस देश में होली खेली जाती है.”

Multilingual Titles

With Multilingual titles where one repeats the same phrase with two different languages or scripts on the page. Google said “the most popular pattern” they see on the web is to append an English version to the original title text. In this example, Google used the title tag of “गीतांजलि की जीवनी – Geetanjali Biography in Hindi” – both English and Hindi. Google said the title in this example consists of two parts, divided by a hyphen, and they express the same contents in different languages, both Hindi and English. But the page’s content, Google said in this example, is written in Hindi only. So Google says its systems will detect “such inconsistency and might use only the Hindi headline text”, so the title link will change to just show “गीतांजलि की जीवनी.”

This is probably a smaller change for most of the readers here but for those who are international, pay attention to your title link changes and check your CTR changes.

Let’s not forget about the title link changes Google made back in August 2021, then confirming the change and then scaling it back a bit in September 2021.

Forum discussion at Twitter.