Two readers, two intents
On Google Search, the reader typed a question. They want to know whether your page answers it, fast: the headline must contain the words they searched, in a readable order, without detours. “Tour de France Sunday: the closed streets in Paris” says exactly what the page holds.
On Discover, nobody searched for anything. The reader scrolls a feed and decides in half a second whether this headline deserves a stop. They have no keywords in mind; they have a curiosity to spark and a promise to keep. “Tour de France: what changes on the Champs this Sunday” does not announce a list, it announces a consequence for them.
Same article, two doors, two headlines. Serving both with one means missing one of them.
What a search headline must do
- Contain the query, or its most natural form, in the first half of the headline: that is where the eye stops in a results page.
- Fit the display: beyond about sixty characters, Google cuts, and it is the end of the headline that disappears.
- Promise nothing the page does not keep. A headline stronger than the article sends the reader back, and that bounce is measured.
- State the scope when it matters: the city, the date, the “how” or the “why”.
What a Discover headline must do
- Open a gap between what the reader knows and what they will learn, without widening it into deceit: Google pulls from Discover the headlines it deems clickbait.
- Speak to the reader, not about the subject: “what changes for you” rather than “modification of the transport plan”.
- Stand without the image, but count on it: Discover shows a large image; the headline completes it rather than describing it.
- Stay true. Discover measures time spent after the click; a disappointing headline costs visibility on the next ones.
Why we propose nine of each
In the Editor, every article gets nine headlines for search and nine for Discover, each from a different angle: the consequence, the number, the question, the place, the actor. Not so you read eighteen; because the right angle is not the first that comes, and a writer chooses better when comparing.
Each headline is scored out of a hundred. For search, the score blends an AI critique and measurable rules in equal parts: length, position of the important words, readability. For Discover, the AI’s share is larger, because a headline’s appeal is poorly judged by rules. When the two judgements differ by more than twenty-five points, the score leans toward the lower one and the Editor flags it: a headline the machine and the rules do not read the same way deserves a human look.
Writing your own? It gets scored too, with the same criteria. The tool is not there to choose for you; it is there so the choice is made knowingly, and so it remains a choice.
What it means day to day
The search headline goes into the page’s title tag and its URL. The Discover headline goes into the field your CMS provides for the social and Discover header, when it exists, and otherwise into the displayed title. Both are fields of your content type in Poquelin: you decide which is required, which is generated, which is offered as a choice. And both are reviewed before publishing by the checklist, like everything else.