Is it best to put the page name before the site name or vice-versa?

Question

The several uses to which the <title> tag is put complicates the question…

• As browser window or search result titles, it would seem to make little difference — there's enough room for everything and the display order is unrelated to the title.

• For tab and taskbar / dock titles, space is at more of a premium. Placing the page name first makes it easier to distinguish between multiple pages on the same site, but if the page names are generic ("Search Results", "Intro to CSS"), it may be more important to distinguish between sites rather than between pages.

• In bookmark titles, having the site name first will both make them easier to find and allow you to group them by doing a simple sort, but users can easily alter the title to their liking (and often do), making the provided "default" title less critical.

What other factors should be considered? Is there a commonly-accepted "best practice"?

Answer 1

I would suspect it comes down to the use case. In the use cases I've dealt with, it's about spotting my browser window in the task bar amongst many others - so I put the app name first - the page name wouldn't help.

Answer 2

You could internationalize it, have the order be local dependent. Also take into account the organization and information architecture of the site and what you're showing in general.

Short answer: depends

Answer 3

If a site has a favicon, that will be a factor too. It will display on the tab and next to the bookmark. The page name should go first to distinguish it within that app.

Answer 4

I think the way Stack Overflow does it is the most common method. If you're on the page and you glance up, it easier to see what the page is about if the website name is at the end, rather than the beginning. Also take into consideration that search engines will often use the title as the anchor text in the results page. You're far more likely to get clicked on if the title has the topic rather than the website name.

Answer 5

For better SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) put the page name before the site name

Answer 6

Funnily enough, I was pondering this exact question not an hour ago.

As the most important piece of information, I would usually expect the page name to come first. Switching between pages on the same site would be far more cumbersome if a site used the inverse approach.

Frankly, I would expect the page name to come first even in places such as bookmarks; it should be up to the bookmark manager to order the tabs as the user requires - not necessarily based on the page title (e.g. sorted by domain).

In my opinion, even the two generic examples you posted would make sense at the start of a title. A quick glance at my tab bar would easily let me find that "Intro to CSS" I was reading earlier. The title "Search Results" could be rewritten as something along the lines of "Search results for 'Death Star'" which would be immensely useful information.

Also, the Favicon as it is currently implemented does an adequate job of helping users to differentiate which site a page belongs to in a group of tabs. As an aside, I wouldn't mind seeing the Favicon used in the taskbar as the browser's application icon as well (don't some browser's do this already?).

Answer 7

Definitely go from the specific to the general, because there are several cases, as you've noted, where the text will be shortened: tabs, history menu, bookmarks.

The case where there may be similar titles for different sites is far far less likely than the case where there are different titles for the same site.

A while ago, Myspace just had the title "myspace.com" for every single page, and it was infuriating. That's a site where you tend to wander around.

If you want an official cite, I know Jakob Nielsen says this, and I think Steve Krug said it in "Don't Make Me Think" as well.

Answer 8

Interestingly, Jakob Nielsen recently (March 2008) posted an "update" to his classic usability guidelines, listing some situations in which he now considers it a better idea to put the site name on the <title> tag before the specific page name / page content.

From http://www.useit.com/alertbox/microcontent-brand-names.html:

Start search engine links with your company name when both of the following conditions hold:

• The link appears as a hit for queries that typically produce a SERP (search engine results page) that's full of junk links.

• You have a widely recognized and well-respected company name.

...

Note that this new guideline applies only to the links that appear in external search engines, such as the GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft).

Amazon.com is currently doing this. For example, the title of the Amazon.com page for the classic "Gang of Four" design patterns book is "Amazon.com: Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software":

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201633612/