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Koval SEO

Different pages share a title

In the reportDuplicate title

duplicate_title · Review item

Short answer

This appears when two or more pages in the crawl have the same title, ignoring only letter case and spacing. Give each page a title that says what it alone offers; keeping a shared site name is fine. If the pages are really one page at several addresses, consolidate them instead.

Severity: Medium. Plan it with your next round of title changes; shared titles do not keep pages out of search, but they make the pages harder to tell apart.

Why it matters

Google's guidance asks for distinct text in every page's title, and its example of every page carrying the same title shows the problem: people cannot tell two pages apart in the results. Title links are generated automatically from several sources, so a repeated title may not be the one Google shows.

What to do

  1. Open the pages listed in the finding and decide what each one is for. Give each a title that names its own subject, for example Sourdough bread | Example Bakery and Rye bread | Example Bakery.
  2. If the titles come from a template or a default value, ask your developer to fill them from each page's own name.
  3. If two addresses show the same page, keep one and permanently redirect the other to it rather than inventing a second title.

When to leave it as it is: if you have looked at the pages and each is already told apart by its content, for example the same product in two sizes, a shared title can be a deliberate choice. Distinct titles still help people pick the right result.

What we read

We read the first <title> of every page in the crawl that answered 200 with HTML, carries no noindex and either declares no canonical or names itself as canonical. The homepage is included. Pages with no title and pages already reported as half-empty or as a shared template are left out, and so are pages that are only a frame for scripts, with almost no text of their own; pages where scripts add part of the content are still checked from the HTML we read.

Two titles count as the same when they match once spacing is collapsed and letter case is ignored; any other difference, even one character, makes them different. Each shared title is one finding, however many pages carry it: the finding lists every page and, beside up to five of them, shows one version of the shared title, with spacing collapsed.

Example & evidence

Illustrative example — two pages, not a live audit.

Two bread pages answer 200 with HTML, carry no noindex and name no other page as canonical: https://bakery.example/breads/sourdough/ and https://bakery.example/breads/rye/. Each has this title:

<title>Fresh bread</title>

The titles match, so the two pages form one finding. A title of FRESH BREAD on one of them would still match, because letter case and spacing are ignored.

A possible correction:

<title>Sourdough bread | Example Bakery</title>
<title>Rye bread | Example Bakery</title>

The titles now differ, so the pair no longer forms a finding.

Confirm & check again

Check for yourself: open the listed pages and compare the titles in their page source. If they match apart from letter case or spacing, the pages share a title.

Check again: Full audit — run a new audit of the site. The finding closes when every page it lists is read again and no two eligible pages share that title. A page that now answers with a permanent redirect within your site also counts; a page that now points its canonical elsewhere, carries noindex or fails to load cannot be confirmed, and the finding stays open.

Limits & sources

Only exact matches count, so near-duplicates such as Fresh bread and Fresh breads are not reported. The check compares pages in this audit's crawl, reads the HTML title without running JavaScript, and does not see which title link Google shows.

Confidence: High when every page in the group was read in full; if one of them shows signs that scripts build part of it, the finding is marked with medium confidence.

Sources

Editorial review: 29 September 2026