Direct answer: Of 25 homepages, 24 have a title (one missing) with a median length of 13 characters: four are only 4 characters, seven are 31–60 and one is 64. Nineteen have a meta description, six do not; the median is 104 characters, four are under 60 (shortest 4) and one is 445.
No duplicate title or description text was found; the issues are presence and the two length extremes.
Method: read title and description from cached HTML
The study reuses the 25 homepage caches from study 4 (2026-10-31 to 11-01) with zero network requests. It reads the <title> and meta description (both attribute orders), strips tags, unescapes entities and collapses whitespace, then counts characters and assigns fixed bands.
| Item | Definition | Boundary |
|---|---|---|
| Title length | Characters in the title text | Not converted to search-result pixel width |
| Description length | Characters in the meta description | Keywords and readability not judged |
| Missing | Tag absent or content empty | Empty counts as missing |
| Bands | Title: 1–4 / 5–15 / 16–30 / 31–60 / 61+; desc: 1–59 / 60–160 / 161–300 / 301+ | Operational bands, not pass lines |
Title: median 13 characters, shortest 4, longest 64
| Title length | Sites | Share of 25 |
|---|---|---|
| Missing | 1 | 4.0% |
| 1–4 characters | 4 | 16.0% |
| 5–15 characters | 9 | 36.0% |
| 16–30 characters | 3 | 12.0% |
| 31–60 characters | 7 | 28.0% |
| 61+ characters | 1 | 4.0% |
A four-character title cannot carry “industry + service + region”; a 64-character title will usually be truncated in search results. Twelve sites sit between 5 and 30 characters.
Description: six missing, lengths from 4 to 445
| Description length | Sites | Share of 25 |
|---|---|---|
| Missing | 6 | 24.0% |
| 1–59 characters | 4 | 16.0% |
| 60–160 characters | 9 | 36.0% |
| 161–300 characters | 5 | 20.0% |
| 301+ characters | 1 | 4.0% |
| Site | Title length | Description length |
|---|---|---|
| E18 | Missing | — |
| E02 / E12 / E28 / E29 | 4 each | 56 / 4 / 53 / 57 |
| E23 | 64 | 53 |
| E14 / E26 | 49 each | 250 / 256 |
| E17 | 36 | 445 |
| E19 | 29 | 4 |
E18 has neither a title nor a description; E19's description is four characters; E17's is 445. Both ends need a manual check, but the study does not judge the copy itself.
What this means for acceptance
- Add the six missing descriptions first. Without one, the search engine assembles the snippet itself.
- Expand the four four-character titles. A brand or abbreviation alone does not say what the homepage offers.
- Handle the long end too. One 64-character title and one 445-character description will be truncated.
- A very short description is effectively none. Four are under 60 characters, the shortest just 4.
- Homepages lag articles. Study 47 found all 36 article pages had a title and description; the homepage template has one missing title and six missing descriptions.
Limits
- Characters are not display width: mixed Chinese and English is not converted to search-result pixels.
- Copy quality not judged: keywords, readability and agreement with page content are not measured.
- Cached, zero-request: homepages from 2026-10-31 to 11-01; later changes are not reflected.
- Bands are operational: not pass lines and not search-engine hard limits.
- 25-site pilot: no industry claim.
Data and reproduction
Anonymised data: equipment-homepage-title-desc-2026.csv (25 rows × 7 columns: title/description presence, lengths and bands). The repository keeps docs/research/2026-11-homepage-title-desc.csv.
Parsing: scripts/article_meta_probe.py (extraction, 7 tests) and scripts/meta_copy_probe.py (bands, 4 tests). Run:
python -m unittest scripts.test_article_meta_probe scripts.test_meta_copy_probe
Related: the article head metadata pilot, the page text share pilot, and the article heading outline pilot.
Sources and definitions
- Homepage cache: 25 homepages from study 4 (2026-10-31 to 11-01).
- Extraction: title element and meta description (both attribute orders).
- Length: characters after tags, entities and whitespace are normalised.
- Bands and missing rules are operational, not pass lines.