Optimistic Title Override feature overriding search result titles

In my opinion there are 6 main challenges that must be planned for and communicated when using SharePoint Document Libraries to store documents:

1. Search Results displays document titles instead of document names
2. Requiring fields leaves documents checked out and only visible to the creator on multiple document upload
3. Difficult to upload multiple files when not using Internet Exporer, and when using a Mac.
4. PDFs prompt to check-out and open by default when opening them from a SharePoint Library.
5. The PDF title property is not displayed in the SharePoint document libraries
6. The SharePoint Search Optimistic Title Override feature overriding search result titles (this article)

OptimisticTitleOverride feature creating search result titles

The OptimisticTitleOverride feature was first implemented in SharePoint 2010, what this feature does is sometimes create a search results title for an Office Document.  What it usually does, is if there is bold or large text at the top of the document then it inserts that bolded or larger text for the document title in search results.  This feature can be useful in many scenarios  but if you have very many Templated documents or any Pre-Office 2007 documents, this feature usually creates huge problems.

For example, let’s say you downloaded an Office Word Template for meeting Agenda’s.  And your organization used this template to create 100’s of meeting agenda’s.  In many of these Word templates, the first bolded text is the word AGENDA.  So even if people had entered descriptive titles in the libraries, when people search, all they see if the generic AGENDA search result.  The other big problem area is with pre-2007 office formats.  In these scenarios the feature usually just takes the first visible text and shows it in search results.  What makes this feature even more confusing, is it only happens some of the time.

In many organizations this feature might work good enough where nothing needs to be changed.  But if you have templates, old office formatted documents, or want a more consistent search results experience:

How how to disable OptimisticTitleOverride in SharePoint 2010

In SharePoint 2010 you can disable this feature by following the steps in this forum post provided by Saji Viswambharan:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sharepointgeneralprevious/thread/dc01077f-c27f-443e-b76c-8018df1ae564/#7177d980-14b2-413c-8d6c-cc979a1b39d6

Configuration for this feature is kept in Windows Registry of SharePoint server and can be turned off by performing the following simple steps.

1. Open registry for editing by typing “regedit.exe” in Start > Run
2. Navigate to the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Global\Gathering Manager]
3. Change the hexadecimal value for EnableOptimisticTitleOverride to 0 (zero) on the right hand side.
4. Restart SharePoint Search service by typing the following commands in command prompt.
   net stop osearch14
   net start osearch14
5. Perform a full crawl

How how to disable OptimisticTitleOverride in SharePoint 2013

There does not seem to be a way to disable this feature in SharePoint 2013.  I’ve created a forum post and I will update that and this article if I find a solution:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointsearch/thread/e27b6b4f-d38f-49ec-9fca-7aa21099886f

Posted by Nick Hurst on May 6, 2013

https://sphelp4u.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/optimistic-title-override-feature-overriding-search-result-titles/