Page title
The page title is the text displayed in the browser tab. It is the <title> not the page heading or <h1>.
When to use
Use a unique page title on every page.
How it works
The page title can have up to 4 items separated by dashes. They are:
- the same <h1> as the page
- section name, which you should only include if the service has more than one section
- service name
- GOV.UK (do not include 'GOV.UK' on internal services)
Using the GOV.UK Prototype kit
Change your page title by updating the default page_title block on each page.
{% block page_title %}
Do you live in the UK? — Your details — Manage your tax credits — GOV.UK
{% endblock %}For pages that use HTML, edit the <title> on each page.
<title>Do you live in the UK? — Your details — Manage your tax credits — GOV.UK<title>If the user makes an error, add ‘Error: ’ to the beginning of the title so screen readers read it out as soon as possible.
<title>Error: Do you live in the UK? — Your details — Manage your tax credits — GOV.UK<title>Personally identifiable information
If there is personally identifiable information in the <h1>, you must make sure it is not recorded in your analytics package.
For example, if the <h1> is ‘What is Gordon's date of birth?’, record ‘What is their date of birth?’.
To do this you could change the page title to use ‘their’ but keep ‘Gordon’ in the <h1>. Or you could keep ‘Gordon’ in the page title and send a different page title to your analytics package.
Research
This guidance is based on the format recommended by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. See Providing descriptive titles for Web pages.
It is more accessible and is consistent with GOV.UK guidance pages.
All users will be able to use the title to know:
- what page they are on
- where that page is inside a service
- they are still on GOV.UK
We need more research. If you have used the page title, get in touch to share your research findings.