Can Google display a diffrent page title?
-
Hi if I search google UK for the phrase car leasing, google returns my listing as
Car Lease Deals
However the same search on Yahoo or Bing bring back
Contract Hire | Vehicle & Car Leasing Deals | Car Lease Deals
this is the real page title. Why would this happen?
Thanks
Andy
-
Actually, Google often changes title tags, especially based on the query. They've been doing this for a couple of years now.
-
To add my experiance to this, it seems to happon more commonly when it feels your h1 or the serch term e.t.c. is more relivent to the search.
Depending on the search, it can harm or hurt. In terms of ranking for your keyword it shouldn't be a problem, but clickthrough wise it is more iffy.
-
Neither. Bad that you have less control over them, but potentially good that Google is showing something different, if it results in more clickthroughs. Unfortunately there is no way to test for that that I'm aware of, at least not while they're changing the title.
I'm not the type that recommends relying on Google to pick the best title for your page, but to be honest, "Contract Hire | Vehicle & Car Leasing Deals | Car Lease Deals" is fairly keyword heavy, and isn't that attractive to click on. A title like "Car Lease Deals" might do better in terms of clickthrough rates, but that's just my speculation.
Changing the title tags seems to be Google's answer to SEO-focused title tags that are packed with keywords, and I think it's a good thing for users. Hard to say for webmasters, but at the moment they don't give us any choice in the matter, since I don't believe they give us the option to turn it off.
This paragraph is speculation on my part: They're likely going to be changing the title based upon (A) things the user is looking for and (B) what else your page says. So if the user looked for "vehicle leasing deals", Google might choose to show that portion of your title tag. On the other hand, they might choose to show "Car Lease Deals" if that phrase is more common on the page and used in header tags, etc.
-
Hi Kane thanks for your speedy answer. Is this a good thing or a bad thing from my perpective.
Thanks
Andy
-
Wow nice! great info Kane, thanks for the link.
-
Yup, they've been changing title tags for at least a year now. Here's a Google Webmaster Blog post about it from Jan 2012:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/01/better-page-titles-in-search-results.html
-
To my understanding, no Google does not display titles dynamically, unless, of course the developer used Javascript or something. In any case it would be bad SEO practice and they wouldn't rank. My only guess would be caching maybe? Very odd indeed.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Great DA but page authority not increasing!
Hey team, I hope you are doing great, I have been working effortlessly to increase the authority of my blog. I have used a number of Moz recommended methods like long-form content, posting frequency, getting references from influencers and great websites. It has all resulted in a good domain authority but no matter what I do, the page authority of my blog isn't increasing. Can you please have a look and guide: https://androidcompare.com/ Kind regards...
Algorithm Updates | | Bsmdi0 -
Do keyword target landing pages increase rankings?
Let's say we create landing pages for targeted keywords in our niche. So like we have landing pages optimised for 80% of the top keywords with decent search volume. If these pages started ranking at first page or around; will this scenario improves the ranking of website? Right now, only few of our top pages are ranking good. Planning to create more of such.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Best and easiest Google Depersonalization method
Hello, Moz hasn't written anything about depersonalization for years. This article has methods, but I don't know if they are valid anymore. What's an easy, effective way to depersonalize Google search these days? I would just log out of Google, but that shows different ranking results than Moz's rank tracker for one of our main keywords, so I don't know if that method is correct. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | BobGW0 -
Google panda, penguin or Patience needed?
Dear friends, On 3rd of May, i suffered a Manual google unnatural outbound link penalty. I recovered from the said penalty on 27th of June. However, i have noticed that my traffic has been dropping since 23rd April. I am confused where to target my work. Should i work on thin content and is it an algorithmic Panda problem (but my keywords are still ranking good) or is it a Penguin problem (I had 6 domains with payday loans backlinks and i have dosavowed 32 backlinks recently) What should be my plan of action here and what would you recommend? An image is attached herewith for your reference, PHd8BzX.png
Algorithm Updates | | marketing911 -
If Google Trends Doubles?
If google shows a search trend doubling in a time frame, does that mean the amount of searches doubled? As in: 2006 was ranked at a 50 on trends and the 100 is 2013 and in 2013 10,000 searches were made, does that mean around 5,000 searches were made in 2006?
Algorithm Updates | | JoshBowers20120 -
Could Retail Price Be A Google Ranking Factor???
I have not done any detailed studies on this but it seems that Google might be using low retail prices for specific items as a ranking factor in their organic SERPs. Does anyone else suspect this? Just askin' to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | EGOL0 -
Does this mean my pages are ranking better?
In GWT impressions are down 17%, clicks are up 57%. Is it safe to assume that pages are ranking better for my site? We have earned a couple great links in the past month.. 5lDZEUJ
Algorithm Updates | | Theskimonster0 -
Classifieds and Google Panda
It seems Google's Panda update is targetting low quality sites with little unique content (I know there's more to it than that). It makes sense that they may want to do this but what about classified sites. They may use some scraped content as well as unique ads, and the ads may lack content as they rely on the users writing the ads. However, they are helpful to the people that use classifieds. Because of these factors, these sites are suffering with the release of the latest Panda update. Any advice for classified sites and how they can combat the rankings drops???
Algorithm Updates | | Sayers0