Our group recently developed a series of Au/M _x O _y /TiO₂ catalysts for CO oxidation, and demonstrated that some of these catalysts are still active after high-temperature treatment whereas Au/TiO₂ deactivates significantly due to the sintering of gold nanoparticles at elevated temperatures (Ma Z, Overbury SH, Dai S (2007) J Mol Catal A 273:97). In the current work, the performance of Au/M _x O _y /TiO₂ (M = Al, Ca, Fe, Zn, Ga, Y, Zr, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Dy, Ho, Er, Yb) catalysts in water-gas shift (WGS) reaction was evaluated. The influences of different metal oxide (M _x O _y ) additives and pretreatment temperatures were investigated, and the catalyst stability as a function of reaction time on stream was tested. Some of these novel gold catalysts, with high activity and stability in water-gas shift, furnish new possibilities for further fundamental research and industrial development.