- : The Document Title element
- Attributes
- Usage notes
- Page titles and SEO
- Examples
- Accessibility concerns
- Examples
- Specifications
- Browser compatibility
- See also
- Found a content problem with this page?
- HTML DOM Element title
- Related Pages
- Syntax
- Property Value
- Return Value
- Browser Support
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- Document: title property
- Value
- Examples
- Specifications
- Browser compatibility
- Found a content problem with this page?
: The Document Title element
The HTML element defines the document’s title that is shown in a browser’s title bar or a page’s tab. It only contains text; tags within the element are ignored.
title>Grandma's Heavy Metal Festival Journaltitle>
Content categories | Metadata content. |
---|---|
Permitted content | Text that is not inter-element whitespace. |
Tag omission | Both opening and closing tags are required. Note that leaving off should cause the browser to ignore the rest of the page. |
Permitted parents | A element that contains no other element. |
Implicit ARIA role | No corresponding role |
Permitted ARIA roles | No role permitted. |
DOM interface | HTMLTitleElement |
Attributes
This element only includes the global attributes.
Usage notes
The element is always used within a page’s block.
Page titles and SEO
The contents of a page title can have significant implications for search engine optimization (SEO). In general, a longer, descriptive title performs better than short or generic titles. The content of the title is one of the components used by search engine algorithms to decide the order in which to list pages in search results. Also, the title is the initial «hook» by which you grab the attention of readers glancing at the search results page.
A few guidelines and tips for composing good titles:
- Avoid one- or two-word titles. Use a descriptive phrase, or a term-definition pairing for glossary or reference-style pages.
- Search engines typically display about the first 55–60 characters of a page title. Text beyond that may be lost, so try not to have titles longer than that. If you must use a longer title, make sure the important parts come earlier and that nothing critical is in the part of the title that is likely to be dropped.
- Don’t use «keyword blobs.» If your title is just a list of words, algorithms often reduce your page’s position in the search results.
- Try to make sure your titles are as unique as possible within your own site. Duplicate—or near-duplicate—titles can contribute to inaccurate search results.
Examples
title>Awesome interesting stufftitle>
This example establishes a page whose title (as displayed at the top of the window or in the window’s tab) as «Awesome interesting stuff».
Accessibility concerns
It is important to provide an accurate and concise title to describe the page’s purpose.
A common navigation technique for users of assistive technology is to read the page title and infer the content the page contains. This is because navigating into a page to determine its content can be a time-consuming and potentially confusing process. Titles should be unique to every page of a website, ideally surfacing the primary purpose of the page first, followed by the name of the website. Following this pattern will help ensure that the primary purpose of the page is announced by a screen reader first. This provides a far better experience than having to listen to the name of a website before the unique page title, for every page a user navigates to in the same website.
Examples
title>Menu - Blue House Chinese Food - FoodYum: Online takeout today!title>
If a form submission contains errors and the submission re-renders the current page, the title can be used to help make users aware of any errors with their submission. For instance, update the page title value to reflect significant page state changes (such as form validation problems).
title> 2 errors - Your order - Sea Food Store - Food: Online takeout today! title>
Note: Presently, dynamically updating a page’s title will not be automatically announced by screen readers. If you are going to update the page title to reflect significant changes to a page’s state, then the use of ARIA Live Regions may be necessary, as well.
Specifications
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser
See also
Found a content problem with this page?
This page was last modified on Apr 14, 2023 by MDN contributors.
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HTML DOM Element title
The title property sets or returns the value of an element’s title attribute.
The title attribute specifies extra information about an element. It can be shown as a tooltip text when the mouse moves over the element.
Related Pages
Syntax
Return the title property:
Property Value
Return Value
Browser Support
element.title is supported in all browsers:
Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Safari | Opera | IE |
Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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Document: title property
The document.title property gets or sets the current title of the document. When present, it defaults to the value of the .
Value
A string containing the document‘s title. If the title was overridden by setting document.title , it contains that value. Otherwise, it contains the title specified in the element.
newTitle is the new title of the document. The assignment affects the return value of document.title , the title displayed for the document (e.g. in the titlebar of the window or tab), and it also affects the DOM of the document (e.g. the content of the element in an HTML document).
Examples
doctype html> html lang="en-US"> head> meta charset="UTF-8" /> title>Hello World!title> head> body> script> alert(document.title); // displays "Hello World!" document.title = "Goodbye World!"; alert(document.title); // displays "Goodbye World!" script> body> html>
Specifications
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser
Found a content problem with this page?
This page was last modified on Jul 7, 2023 by MDN contributors.
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