Title Junk

[rcjordan]

Who are these title-junk keywords aimed at? Google? Do you they really think that putting "breaking news" in their home page title makes it more likely that Google will rank them higher when people search for that term? It's like they're taking advice out of an SEO book from 1995.

Even worse, from an SEO perspective, is that Google, and all other major search engines, use web page titles as the name for pages in search results. MSNBC is the fourth result at Google in a search for "news", but its page title is so long that "MSNBC" doesn't actually appear in the result entry title.

http://daringfireball.net/2010/12/title_junk

Worth a read. He didn't mention it, but the problem is made worse by cms systems.

[Adam C]

Who are these title-junk keywords aimed at? Google? Do you they really think that putting "breaking news" in their home page title makes it more likely that Google will rank them higher when people search for that term? It's like they're taking advice out of an SEO book from 1995.

Well, they are ranking 2nd for "breaking news" so I'd wager its helping them.  

Just cos it was written in 1995 doesn't necessarily mean its no longer true