Google Knows Best – Page Titles and CTRs

Michael Garrity — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:30:00 GMT

It wouldn’t be outrageous to assert that page titles are the most important information that most searchers take into consideration when skimming SERPs. Their significance is underscored by the fact that on all major search engines, these titles aren’t just descriptions but are actually the links that users click to go to a website.

With over a decade of SEO practices now under our collective Web belt, website owners and Internet marketers have come to understand a few key generalities about what makes a good headline and helps a site stand out amongst its competitors, and thus, what drives higher click-through rates (CTR). For example, we know that titles need to be descriptive of the page content; they need to be unique and not repeated elsewhere on a site; they need to avoid keyword stuffing, and it doesn’t hurt to add some branding, either.

But just because we know about some of these best practices for page-title generation, that doesn't mean that everyone follows them -- or that they work in every situation.

Google recently came out and dropped a not-entirely-shocking bombshell: Sometimes its algorithms may change the page title that webmasters designate for a site.

While Google asserts that it has always advised people “to write unique, descriptive page titles,” they’re apparently treated like meta descriptions, that is to say, more as suggestions than anything else. This is because the company has found that some titles generated by webmasters may not be the best options (the “most optimized,” if you will), and in these cases the algorithm will “generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages.”

Despite the fact that Google primarily looks at the <title> tags specified in a site’s HTML markup when deciding on the best title, the given title is not always used, and, theoretically, the webmaster/site owner may never even know; although, Google does say that it tries to notify webmasters when it discovers “titles that can be improved on their websites.”

To be fair, Google has the best of intentions at heart, and the alternative titles that are selected are done so based on testing to determine the title most relevant to the query. In the end, this “can substantially improve the clickthrough rate to the result,” according to Google.

However, relevancy is only the reason for alternative titles “about half of the time.” The other half is for pages that (A) don’t have titles, (B) specify non-descriptive titles (such as simply, “Home”), (C) use the same title (or just minor variations) on most or all of a website’s pages or (D) are unnecessarily long or hard to read. In these instances, Google is essentially cleaning up poorly concocted titles and replacing them with algorithmically approved alternatives that are more informative and helpful to searchers based on their queries.

Unfortunately, as with most information about Google’s algorithm, there isn’t much available when it comes to how the company determines the best alternative titles for a site. Typically these new Google-created titles originate from words pulled out of the content on the page, which is much the same tactic the algorithm uses when it crafts its own page descriptions for SERPs.

Though this may come across as somewhat convoluted, the goal on Google’s part is simple: to help users by providing them with the most relevant information about the content of a Web page and, in turn, increase CTRs for the sites listed on SERPs. By helping to optimize your titles for better results, Google is creating a win-win situation for site owners/webmasters and searchers alike.

And it’s important to remember that Google reserves the right to change titles as it sees fit, so if you don’t like the idea of the company toying with the information you present, your only option is to optimize page titles yourself. The good news is that Google tells you how to best do that in its Help Center.

Smaato Measures Mobile Fill Rates and CTRs

Michael Garrity — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:00:00 GMT

A quarter two study by mobile ad optimization platform Smaato was released today and finds that ad inventory has been increasing at a faster rate than budgets, ulitmately leading to a decline in advertising fill rates.

The study was put together to look at a variety of mobile Web-based topics, including mobile ad adoption, fill rates and the overall effect on mobile ad network performance.

Another discovery that the study unearthed is that phones using Windows' mobile operating system had much higher clickthrough rates (CTRs) than iOS, Android, Blackberry and Symbian, both in the United States and across the globe.

Mobile Ad Networks
According to the study, the average ad network fill rate, worldwide, was 18 percent in quarter two of this year. That represents a 2 percent drop from quarter one and a 3 percent decrease from quarter two of 2010.

For the top 40 mobile advertising networks in the world, rates varied greatly, from 3 to 58 percent, but among the top 20 networks in the U.S., rates consistently declined from an average of 27 to 19 percent.

Smaato CEO Harald Neidhardt cites both the downturned economy and "an increasingly fragmented market" as reasons for the decline.

However, one bright spot that the study found was that there are typically higher returns for networks engaging in "specialization," such as offering a service like geo-location. Nine of the top 40 global networks that were specialized performed above the average Smaato index despite having smaller volumes than their competitors.

Mobile OS CTRs
Moving past networks and onto operating systems, the study measured the CTRs of various devices using different OS platforms.

Worldwide across operating systems, the highest CTRs to lowest, in order, were Windows Phones (taking the top spot for the second consecutive quarter), Symbian, RIM, iOS and Android, though the Google-owned OS saw its performance increase by nearly 50 percent from the same time last year.

It's a different outlook in the U.S., however, with Windows Phones just barely ahead of iOS, RIM out performing Symbian, and Android still trailing all of them.

Never fear, however, as Neidhardt sees a bright future for Android. "As the trend continues, we will see even greater demand from big brands and advertisers for the Android platform, and therefore greater revenue opportunities for publishers and developers as Android continues to proliferate."

'Net Features : clickthrough rates

Google Knows Best – Page Titles and CTRs

Smaato Measures Mobile Fill Rates and CTRs