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HTML page title

Status

  1. Research completed
  2. Draft completed
  3. Pending
  4. Required not completed

Pending

This standard will be pending for one year. Agencies will be required to comply with this standard on September 26, 2025.

Standard

Use a descriptive, unique, and concise HTML page title for every page of your website.

Why

A descriptive page title is important for accessibility and discoverability. People rely on page titles to understand the contents of a page and how it’s different from other pages. HTML page titles are often used by search engines as the link to your web page from search results. HTML page titles appear at the top of a browser tab. They’re often the first item read by screen readers when visiting a web page.

Applies to

Executive branch agency websites and digital services that are intended for use by the public

Acceptance criteria

These conditions must be met to comply with this standard.

  • Every page of your site must have a unique HTML page title.
  • HTML page titles must be at least 20 characters to ensure that they provide enough detail about the page's purpose.

How to implement

These are tips to help you implement this standard.

  • Specify a title in the HTML <title> element for every page of your website. The <title> element is part of the <head> section in the web page HTML code.
  • Titles should be unique, descriptive, and concise. Try to keep titles to between 50 and 60 characters. Titles that are too short might not be descriptive enough and titles that are too long might be truncated on search results pages.
  • Provide context for visitors by including branding information, like your site name, product, or agency, at the end of the HTML page title. The unique part of your page title should appear first.
  • The HTML page title pattern you choose should be consistent throughout the pages of your website.

Examples

These examples show the HTML code for HTML page titles.

<title>Medicaid and CHIP Quality Rating System | Medicaid</title>

<title>Communities of Practice Job Board – Digital.gov</title>

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