✓ DO THIS
✓ Declarative statements — questions are 3.6x rarer
✓ "Officially Confirms/Reveals/Teases" — never "Announces"
✓ 10–14 words / 60–90 chars (hard ceiling ~100)
✓ Power words: officially, new, first, finally
✓ Listicles: 10 (flagship), 5, or 8/7/6 — end ", Ranked"
✓ Franchise as the first word (2.8x competitor pattern)
✓ Colons: franchise-first, ≤4 words before the colon
✗ DON'T DO THIS
✗ Question marks (1.5% of competitor titles) & exclamations (1/1,441)
✗ Em-dashes — 0 of 1,441 competitor titles
✗ "You Forgot / You Need to See / Right Now" guilt suffixes (dead: 0-1/318)
✗ Counts over 15 ("22 Things...") — competitors cap at 15
✗ Exceed ~100 characters (5.7% ceiling)
✗ 2+ commas — one comma + "But/And" max
✗ Year in parentheses "(2026)" — years go in "of 2026 So Far" suffixes
The Discover Title Formula
[Franchise] Is Officially [Status] [on Platform / X Years Later] · [5/8] [Superlative] [Franchise] [Noun], Ranked
ERA-2 (post spam-update, mined 24 Aug) — no questions, no quotes, no "Every X" · platform names (Netflix/HBO) + "X Years Later" anchors now score · full evidence: reports/ERA2-PLAYBOOK.md