Misplaced title: what it means and how to fix it

What we look for

The first <title> tag on these pages, which sets the headline shown in search results, sits outside <head>, the top section of the page's code. Only pages search engines may list are counted.

Why it matters

Search engines may ignore a title outside <head>, and then they write their own headline for the result.

How to fix

Move the <title> tag into <head> in the page template. If it is already there in your source, look for an element above it, such as an <img> or a <div>, that makes the browser end <head> early.

Seen in a real crawl

From a crawl of Millbrook Hardware (the broken fixture), a test site from Raptor’s fixture suite.

Medium

1 page sets its title in the wrong part of its code

/title-outside-headTitle tag found outside <head>

Paths on http://127.0.0.1:8001raptor 0.3.0, 17 Oct 2026

Open this finding in that crawl’s report

Where you’ll see it

The id is stable, and every surface uses it, so it’s the thing to search for or hand to an agent.

Terminal: When it is one of the five findings under Fix first, raptor crawl prints the id under it.
Check: page_titles.outside_head
crawl.json and the CSV: The crawl JSON names the finding by this id, and so do the CSV and raptor_query.
"check_id": "page_titles.outside_head"
The HTML report: This link opens the finding in the report, and each finding shows its id.
crawl.html#finding=page_titles.outside_head
MCP: raptor_findings with this check_id returns the finding in full, with a fix brief ready to paste into a task. If it didn’t fire, it says why.
raptor_findings { "job_id": "...", "check_id": "page_titles.outside_head" }