Warningmeta.title-duplicate

Pages share the same title

Why it matters

When several pages have the same <title>, their search results look identical: a searcher can't tell the pricing page from the contact page. Google's guidance, under "Avoid repeated or boilerplate text": "It's important to have distinct text that describes the content of the page in the <title> element for each page on your site", with the example that titling every page of a shop the same "makes it impossible for users to distinguish between two pages". The cost is to how your results look and whether the right one is clicked, not a ranking penalty. The usual causes are a theme that prints the site name as every title, or paginated and filtered lists (/blog/page/2) inheriting their parent's.

Source: Influencing your title links in search results. Only pages that can be indexed are compared: a noindex page competes with nothing.

How to fix it

Give each page a title that says what is on that page, with the brand last:

<title>Wedding cake prices | Flour & Co</title>

For lists that run to several pages, add the page number ("Blog, page 2 | Flour & Co") or set those pages to noindex. In an SEO plugin this is the title template for each content type.

Examples

These are the rule's own test pages, and what it says about each. They are run on every change to the rule book.

Warning3 pages share the title "Flour & Co": /, /about, /contact.

fail-site-name-everywhere
Example site
{
    "pages": [
        {
            "url": "/",
            "title": "Flour & Co"
        },
        {
            "url": "/about",
            "title": "Flour &  Co "
        },
        {
            "url": "/contact",
            "title": "flour & co"
        },
        {
            "url": "/cakes",
            "title": "Wedding cakes"
        }
    ]
}

PassedEvery indexable page we scanned has a title of its own.

pass-distinct
Example site
{
    "pages": [
        {
            "url": "/",
            "title": "Flour & Co"
        },
        {
            "url": "/cakes",
            "title": "Wedding cakes | Flour & Co"
        },
        {
            "url": "/tag/x",
            "title": "Flour & Co",
            "noindex": true
        }
    ]
}