Page title missing or empty
What it is
The page has no <title> element in its <head>, or the title it has is empty or only whitespace. The title is the name of the page: search results show it as the clickable headline, browsers show it on the tab and in bookmarks, and it is one of the first things a crawler reads to learn what the page covers.
Why it matters
Google asks for a title on every page . Without one it builds the title link from other text, such as a heading, prominent text or the words other sites use when they link to the page, and that may not be the name you would pick. An AI assistant citing the page has no name you wrote to show for it either. A missing title usually comes from a template, so it tends to affect many pages at once.
How Asky checks it
Asky parses the page’s raw HTML the way a browser does and looks for <title> elements inside <head>. A title set by JavaScript is not seen, and a <title> inside an SVG image does not count. The page is reported when neither the head nor the body has a title, or when the first title in the head is empty after trimming whitespace. A page whose only title landed in <body>, often because an <img>, <div> or <iframe> closed the head early, is reported as page title outside the head instead. The length checks and the same-as-H1 check are skipped while this is reported.
Reported as an error with high severity.
How to fix it
- Open the page source (View Source, not the element inspector, which shows the page after JavaScript has run) and search for
<title>. - If there is none or it is empty, fill in the page’s SEO title: the Title tag in Webflow page settings, the SEO plugin’s title field in WordPress, or the title field your Sanity schema passes to the front end.
- If the field is filled but the source still shows nothing, the template does not print it. Add a single
<title>to the head of the template; in WordPress, the theme needs title-tag support. - If only JavaScript sets the title, as in many single-page apps, render it on the server or at build time so it is in the HTML.
- Write 30 to 60 characters that describe this page only, worded differently from the H1. Shorter is reported as below 30 characters, longer as over 60 characters, and a title matching the H1 as same as H1.
Example
https://example.com/blog/pricing-guide uses a template that prints an empty title when the SEO field is blank:
<!-- Before: the SEO title field was left empty -->
<title></title>
<!-- After: 52 characters, distinct from the H1 "How to price a SaaS product" -->
<title>SaaS Pricing Guide: Models and Examples | Example Co</title>