Duplicate title tags: how to find and fix them

The title is the strongest on-page statement of what a page is about, and the headline of its search result. When ten pages all say Products | Acme, nothing in the title helps a search engine decide which one answers a query, or helps a searcher decide which result to click.

Google asks for distinct title text on each page and names boilerplate titles as a problem it may correct by writing a title link of its own. The result is a headline you did not write.

Duplicate titles are also a symptom. They often point at duplicate pages, at pagination or filters that create near-identical URLs, or at a template that was never given a title field.

• A template with a fixed title, such as every blog post titled Blog | Acme.
• Paginated lists where page 2, 3 and 4 keep page 1's title.
• Filter, sort or tracking parameters that produce separate crawlable URLs of one page.
• Variants of one product (sizes, colours) with a page each and the same title.
• The same page reachable at two paths, for example with and without a trailing slash, with no canonical.

Sort each duplicate group into one of two cases, because they have opposite fixes.

Different pages, same title

Rewrite the template so the title includes whatever makes each page distinct: the post title, the product name and variant, the category, the location, or Page 2 for pagination. Put the distinguishing words first and the brand last.

The same page at several URLs

Do not write new titles for copies. Choose the URL that should rank, add rel="canonical" pointing at it from the others, and 301-redirect the copies where you can. Once the copies point elsewhere, the audit stops grouping them.

Titles are compared across the whole crawl, so this check needs a site audit. A single-page tool cannot see what the other pages are called. The free meta tag checker is still useful for previewing a rewritten title on one URL.