Why Does Google Keep Changing My Page Titles?
-
I know Google has been doing this for quite some time but how do you "control" what Google will display as your page name?
Lots of my pages come up with a title like "[searched keyword] - [website name]" in the search results. I usually a huge drop in CTR when this happens.
On the other hand, there are some pages which have kept their title intact in the search results.
So what gives? How come one page's title is changed and the other is not?
-
I changed my page title so it has less than 60 chars: now Google is showing MY page title, not theirs.
-
My website isn't listed on dmoz
-
Sometimes you can get 70 characters to show on the SERP, but sometimes it's less. As far as I know, 60 is still the safest threshold.
-
There are many reasons why Google may decide to change your title tag in the SERPs besides the length, however. As your example shows, Google likes titles that are keyword rich, concise, and branded. The closer your titles match the search query -- and your page -- the less likely they are to be rewritten. You aren't using boilerplate templates for your titles are you (or auto generated ones)?
Would you mind sharing some examples of titles that have remained intact as well as ones that have been changed by Google?
-
The title tags are actually at risk of being truncated (or, in some cases, replaced) when they are too wide now. So a title of around 100 character can in theory show up in the SERPs without being cut off if it uses primarily thin letters. The ideal pixel width, however, is still somewhat of a mystery -- somewhere around 500px.
-
If google is just adding website name it could be because of dmoz info research
-
I shortened the title and see how it goes in a few weeks.
-
Isn't it 70?
One particular title I'm looking at currently has 68 chars.
-
Are you ensuring that your title tags come in under 60 characters? They seem to be rewriting the long ones more often.
-
Yeah but it sucks when the result just above yours is something like:
[keyword] Special Discount 50% Off - [Website Name]
-
You can't control this, I don't think. Google seems to think Keyword - Website Name is better for searchers.
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
-
Should you do on-page optimization for a page with rel=canonical tag?
If you ad a rel=canonical tag to a page, should you still optimize that page? I'm talking meta description, page title, etc.
On-Page Optimization | | marynau0 -
Why is Google replacing my meta title with the business name on home page?
For all queries that return the home page, Google is not showing my meta title. Instead it replaced it with the official business name which of course makes it harder to rank for key terms since they don't exist now in the meta title. You can see this is you search on "mt view estate planning attorney". The site in question is dureelaw.com and the title showing is "The Law Office of Daniel L. DuRee." View the source and you'll see my meta title. Why is Google substituting it?
On-Page Optimization | | katandmouse0 -
Duplicate page titles and Content in Woocommerce
Hi Guys, I'm new to Moz and really liking it so far!
On-Page Optimization | | jeeyer
I run a eCommerce site on Wordpress + WooCommerce and ofcourse use Yoast for SEO optimalisation I've got a question about my first Crawl report which showed over 600 issues! 😐 I've read that this is something that happens more often (http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success). Most of them are categorized under:
1. Duplicate Page Titles or;
2. Duplicate Page Content. Duplicate Page Titles:
These are almost only: product category pages and product tags. Is this problem beeing solved by giving them the right SEO SERP? I see that a lot of categories don't have a proper SEO SERP set up in yoast! Do I need to add this to clear this issue, or do I need to change the actual Title? And how about the Product tags? Another point (bit more off-topic) I've read here: http://moz.com/community/q/yoast-seo-plugin-to-index-or-not-to-index-categories that it's advised to noindex/follow Categories and Tags but isn't that a wierd idea to do for a eCommerce site?! Duplicate Page Content:
Same goes here almost only Product Categories and product tags that are displayed as duplicate Page content! When I check the results I can click on a blue button for example "+ 17 duplicates" and that shows me (in this case 17 URLS) but they are not related to the fist in any way so not sure where to start here? Thanks for taking the time to help out!
Joost0 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
Does my actual blog post title have any effect once I create a title tag for SEO purposes?
A little confused about this. Reason I ask is that using my actual title for my title tag sometimes isn't the best for getting ranked, so the title and title tag are sometimes not the same.
On-Page Optimization | | seo_f20120 -
Where does Google say this?
Just came across this article: http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/tips-for-avoiding-thin-content And, it states, "Google says that it will ignore pages with less than 200 words of body text " I submitted a comment to the author, but was wondering in the meantime if anyone knows where Google says this?
On-Page Optimization | | nicole.healthline0 -
Why some pages are not indexed?
I have a furniture´s ecommerce. When searching for "site: movstore.com.br" returned 1080 results, but if I search for "site: movstore.com.br / Product" returned 1020 results. I mean, that 1080 indexed pages, 1020 are products pages and the other 60 pages are irrelevant. Where are the category pages? "site: movstore.com.br / Categories" - 0 results
On-Page Optimization | | maisempresas
"site: movstore.com.br / Departments" - 0 results
"site: movstore.com.br / Marks" - 0 results What might be happening?0 -
How can we get Google to offer postcard verification for our Place Page?
Most of the time, when we claim a Google Place Page, they give 2 choices to verify ownership: 1) phone verification and 2) postcard verification. But right now (and for several weeks), for our listing, they are only giving the phone verification choice, which unfortunately won't work with our automated phone system. How can we get our Place Page listing verified through a postcard sent to our address, when Google isn't presenting that as an option?
On-Page Optimization | | DenisL0