8 Comments
May 2, 2023Liked by Barry Adams

For some reason I had it in my head that Google doesn't like it when you show users a different headline than you show Google — so this was really helpful in dispelling that for me.

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I remember formerly some guides said that the hub page/category page title (the anchor leading to the article itself) should be identical to the article's h1 in order for you to perform well in Google News. Always wondered why this would be the case, but now I see it was probably just a misinterpreted coincidence.

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Nov 7, 2023Liked by Barry Adams

Hi Barry, I have the feeling that Google recently clearly favors the h1 heading in Top Stories and largely ignores the title tag and the structured data headline.

Even in organic search entries, the h1 heading now seems to be preferred. (That's new, right?)

As a result, I have observed that many large news publishers no longer make a distinction between these 3 headlines and instead use the same headline everywhere.

Have you made similar observations?

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