Missing page titles
Every page needs a title, which appears in search results, browser tabs, bookmarks, and shared links. Silktide reports pages that have no title at all.
The title is set with the <title> tag in the page's header:
<head>
<title>Contact us - Example Corporation</title>
</head>
Why this matters
The title is the single most visible piece of text a page has outside itself: it is the headline of your search results, the label on the browser tab, and the default text when the page is bookmarked or shared. A page without one appears in search results under whatever text the search engine improvises – often just the URL – which few people click on.
Titles also matter for accessibility: the title is the first thing a announces when a page loads, so an untitled page leaves the user guessing where they are.
How to fix it
- Add a
<title>to the page's<head>. In most content management systems this is the page's name or a dedicated "browser title" field, so a missing title often means a template is broken or a field was left blank. - Write a title that describes the specific page, with the unique words first and an optional short brand suffix:
Contact us - Example Corporation. - Make each page's title unique - duplicated titles make pages indistinguishable in search results and browser tabs.
How Silktide tests this
- Read the page's
<title>tag. - Flag the page when the tag is absent or its text is empty.
Titles that exist but are too long are reported separately by Long page titles.