Retrieve Full Page Titles in Google Search

Fill the page link titles with the full respective page titles, if possible

Author
Benjamin Philipp
Daily installs
0
Total installs
201
Ratings
4 1 0
Version
2.0.1
Created
2017-02-15
Updated
2023-12-27
License
N/A
Applies to

Alright... I know there has to be a limit for link texts. I get it.
That doesn't mean I have to like or even accept it.

I've always wondered why they don't include a longer version of the title in the link titles ("<a href='URI'>Too long t...</a>" --> "<a href='URI' title='Too long title'>Too long t...</a>").

They could leave the actual link text short, and provide at least a title that's a bit longer for mouse overs.

I wrote a script that does the leg work for you there.

This script goes through all the links, looking for new links ending with "...".

It gets the target page for each match in the background and takes the title and puts it in the search result link, either replacing the original content, or as a Link Title.
Settings can be changed at the top of the script.
If it's set to replace the original like text, you can still find it in the link title by hovering over it.

Limitations:

  • When you request a .pdf file, it will open as a download. Because of that, I'm excluding URIs that end in ".pdf" from being followed up.
  • I couldn't find an effective way of really only getting the page <head>, I'm getting the whole document. This means there is a bit of traffic happening in the background while the pages are being checked. You might not want to use it if you are super low on data volume.

Update 2.0.1 2023-12-27

  • Updated integration of GM_Config (https://github.com/sizzlemctwizzle/GM_config) after breaking change months ago. So sorry, I was unaware of that change 😬
  • Added "Reddit - Dive into anything" to the default ignore list :(
    That stings, sad to see Reddit go.

Update 2.0.0 2022-08-18

  • Using GM_Config for settings now (https://github.com/sizzlemctwizzle/GM_config) 🖤
    (Available from the Tampermonkey menu, under the script name)
  • Added setting to disregard new titles if they're shorter than the old ones. Duh, should have done that from the start ^^
    (ON by default)
  • The new titles, as well as additional info (old titles, errors, warnings) are now always shown in the element title (mouse hover tooltip), where applicable
  • Moved away from extending the whole layout width in favor of just showing the overflowing new titles.
    This is to prevent clashes with google widgets and panels that may appear on the right.
    If anything is covered, the longet titles are now always available on mouse hover over the links.
  • Fixed a potential issue where titles containing special chars could inadvertently render HTML instead of just their escaped text 😬
  • Using my function library again, also for nicer logging
  • Moved to classes for styling instead of "spaghetti" element styles
  • I dunno, probably some other stuff. I'm an artist, not a book keeper 😜

Update 1.9.7 2022-03-16

  • added newer CSS variable "center-column-width" for unrestricting column width

Updates 1.9.4 - 1.9.6 2020-2021

  • Remove width limit for results column and items
  • corrected selectors for color changes
  • changed background colors from "very light shades" to "transparent colors", for dark mode

Updates 1.9.0 - 1.9.3: Oops, I haven't shared my updates in a while and the history is lost to time 😅

Update v1.8 2020-11-14

  • Updated the element selector for h3 titles according to some change Google made at some point.
  • Reverted back to update URL referring to my webspace, which gets updates automatically. (NVM, this is overwritten by GreasyFork)

Update v1.6 2018-12-10

  • Adjusted for new search results DOM structure
    Used to be `#ires .g .rc h3.r a`; is now `#ires .g .rc .r a h3`
  • Added visual feedback: light red background where a title needs to be fetched, light green where successful.

Update v1.5 2017-02-15

  • Added update-resistent Settings system
  • Included /webhp? URL
  • Improved title RegEx to include <title prop="Example">Title</title> cases
  • Improved change detection

Update v1.4 2017-02-15

  • Updatability, GitHub

Update v1.3 2017-02-15

  • Added option to write the Title to the link's innerHTML
  • Added logging/verbosity levels

Update v1.2 2017-02-15

  • Unescaped HTML in page titles. No more ugly quotes, brackets, ampersands, etc
  • Changed include match to exclude google image search