Carefully written title tags are an important part of optimizing a page for search. Not only do they help Google understand the page’s content, they’re also often used as the title on the search results page (formally known as the title link).

Historically, Google would rely on the title tag site owners and SEOs implemented for the title on the search engine results page (SERP). It was mainly in cases where Google considered the title tag to be “sub-optimal” (i.e., not aligned with the content on the page itself) that it would rewrite the title for the SERP.

All of that changed at the end of August 2021. Suddenly, Google began rewriting titles here, there, and everywhere. Early speculation saw a 77% increase in Google not exactly using the content found in the title tag on the SERP itself.