Do search engines index the title element?

This test will seek to determine if search engines index the title element.

The title element was designed for web browsers to display to users.

Here is an example title element:

<title>Do search engines index the title element?</title>

Testing Methodology

This page contains a title element. This title element is displayed in the upper left hand corner on most web browsers. The title element can be seen if you view the source code to this web page.

Evaluation Methodology

Look in the upper left hand corner of your web browser or view the source code to this web page to view the title element.

Search for the unique string from the title element in these search engines.

Search Engine	Expected Result
Google	Yes
Yahoo	Yes
MSN	Yes
AltaVista	Yes
AllTheWeb	Yes

If this page shows up in the search results, then that search engine most likely indexes the title element.

Caveats

This page was put online on 22 April, 2004. It will take some time for each search engine to crawl and index this page to make this test "live."

On 11 May, 2004 a second unique search term was added to correct the improper use of the term "tag".

A malicious person could link to this page using the unique string in the title element as link text. This would force a false positive on most search engines and invalidate the test results.

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