When Google began rewriting headlines with AI in Discover last year, it called the test “small.” The following month, it was reclassified as a feature.
Now the same pattern appears in traditional search results.
Google confirmed The edge (subscription required) that it tests AI-generated title rewrites in search. The company described the test as “small and narrow.” This is similar language to what Google used before it reclassified AI headlines in Discover as a feature.
What happens in search
Several Verge staffers have spotted rewritten titles in recent months. In one case, “I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything” appeared in the results as “‘cheat on everything’ AI tool”. Another article was rewritten under the title “Co-Pilot Changes: Marketing Teams Are Starting Over,” wording the never-used article.
The test is not limited to news sites. Google said this affects other types of websites as well.
None of the rewrites revealed that Google had changed the original title.
Google told The Verge that the goal is to “identify content on a page that would make a useful and relevant title for a user’s query.” The company said the test aims to “better match headlines to user queries and facilitate engagement with web content.”
Any broader launch might not use generative AI, the company said, but it didn’t explain what the alternative would look like. The test has not been approved for wider deployment.
How Discover AI Titles Became a Feature
We have been track Google’s treatment of Discover through several changes this year. Here’s how the title experience went.
In December, Google called AI-generated headlines in Discover a “small UI experience for a subset of Discover users.” By JanuaryGoogle has reclassified the feature. It “now performs well in terms of user satisfaction,” according to the Nieman Lab report.
That’s about a month from testing to reclassified functionality.
During this period, Google has revised its Discover guidelines alongside February’s main Discover update and deploying AI insights which display short AI-generated summaries with links. Each change added another layer of AI-mediated content between publishers and readers in Discover.
The search test follows the same opening movement. Google describes it as small, narrow and not approved for wider deployment.
How this differs from existing title rewrites
Rewrites of title tags in search results are nothing new. Google has been doing this for years using rules-based systems. A analysis of over 80,000 title tags found that Google changed 61% of them. A follow-up study puts this figure at 76%.
These existing rewrites are extracted from elements already present on the page. According to Google Title Link DocumentationThe system relies on title elements, H1 headings, og:title meta tags, anchor text, and other sources on the page.
The new test is different. In the Copilot example, the rewritten headline used wording that didn’t exist anywhere in the article. It is a generative AI that creates new text.
Why it matters
A analysis of more than 400 publishers found that Discover’s share of traffic from Google increased from 37% to around 68%. For publishers who rely heavily on Discover, AI rewriting of titles becoming a feature in search would mean losing control of titles on their two main sources of Google traffic.
Google’s title links documentation describes the inputs Google can use to generate titles, but does not include an editor control to disable rewrites. And since Google doesn’t reveal when a title has been rewritten, you may not know it’s happening to your content unless you check manually.
Sean Hollister, editor-in-chief of The Verge, wrote:
“It’s like a bookstore tearing off the covers of the books it displays and changing their titles.”
Louisa Frahm, SEO director at ESPN, wrote on LinkedIn:
“After more than 10 years in news SEO, I have discovered that a headline is the most important element to attract readers in timely windows, to provide a focused summary that elevates the voice of your brand. If this view is changed and the facts are distorted, the long-term trust of the audience will be compromised.”
Looking to the future
Publishers monitoring their search visibility should check whether their titles appear as written in Google results. There is no tool for this, so it requires a manual spot check.
Featured Image: elenabsl/Shutterstock
