SearchPilot: adding 'The Best' to title tags lifted traffic 10%

“The Best” is one of the most common phrases in listicle titles, and whether it actually earns clicks is usually argued from instinct. SearchPilot, an SEO A/B-testing company, put it to a controlled test on a client’s editorial site and published the result. Everything reported below comes from SearchPilot’s own case study, written by Daniel Haugen and dated March 23, 2023; this piece is a write-up of their test, not a test we ran.

What did SearchPilot change in the title tags?#

The hypothesis was simple: add the phrase “The Best” to the beginning of each title tag in one section of the site, and the variant pages would earn a better click-through rate and more organic traffic. SearchPilot split comparable pages into a control group, which kept the original titles, and a variant group, which got the new ones. Because both groups ran at the same time on the same site, seasonality, algorithm updates and sitewide changes affect both equally, so the difference between them isolates the title change.

The case study shows the control and variant titles only as a screenshot and does not name the client, the page count or the test dates. We are not reconstructing those details.

How much did organic traffic change?#

The variant pages gained a statistically significant 10% uplift in organic traffic against the forecast built from the control group. SearchPilot estimated that deploying the new titles across the whole site section would add roughly 11,000 organic sessions per month. Both numbers are SearchPilot’s; the case study does not publish the confidence interval behind the result or the baseline traffic the 10% is measured against.

Why did the new title win?#

SearchPilot is candid that it does not know which of two levers moved. A new title can raise click-through rate on the rankings a page already holds, the way a promotional offer in a title tends to. It can also add words that make the page rank for a different set of queries. Organic traffic captures the net outcome of both, which is why SearchPilot measures it instead of CTR alone, and why the 10% cannot be split between clicks and rankings.

One detail matters more than it first appears. The test ran after Google began rewriting most title tags in search results, which could have made the experiment meaningless. SearchPilot reports that Google respected the change and displayed the variant titles. Google’s own title link documentation lists the title element first among the sources it uses, and says it may generate a different title link when it detects an issue such as a half-empty, obsolete, inaccurate or boilerplate title. A title that reads naturally and matches the page avoids those triggers.

How do you test a title change on your own site?#

Most sites cannot run a controlled split test, but the first two steps cost nothing. Preview the rewritten title in the SERP snippet preview to confirm the added words do not push the key phrase past the point where the result is truncated. Then run the whole template through the bulk title and meta checker to catch titles that the prefix makes too long or turns into duplicates across pages.

After that, change one template at a time and compare its Search Console clicks against a similar template you left alone over the same weeks. That is a weaker design than SearchPilot’s, but it keeps seasonality from being mistaken for a title effect, which a simple before-and-after read cannot do.

Why we care#

Title and meta description tooling is what brings most readers to this site, and most advice on titles is opinion. This case gives one measured, controlled result: a two-word prefix moved organic traffic by 10% on a real editorial site. It is still one template on one site, with the pages, dates and confidence interval undisclosed, so the honest reading is narrow. “The Best” can work when it describes what the page actually is, and a title change is worth testing rather than assuming, because Google showed the new titles as written here.