Google is not respecting the meta title
-
We're experiencing a peculiar situation with Google not respecting our meta <title>.</p> <p>As you can see in the first image (search result), the title <a href="http://open.iebschool.com/profesores/startups/">for the page</a> is a part of the content. This is relatevely normal for the description, but we never heard of Google doing this before.</p> <p>In the code, the <title> and meta description are correctly implemented.</p> <blockquote style="background-color: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> <p><meta name="description" content="Profesores, tutores, autores y docentes 2.0 de Open IEBS. Conoce su Biografía, experiencia, reputación, conexiones sociales y las valoraciones de alumnos."/><br /><title>Conoce los profesores, tutores, autores y docentes de Open IEBS.</title>
In a further research, we discovered that the title which is using is an
in anwith the following code (cleaned and simplified for the question):
<hgroup>
Pilar Soro
0 Seguidor
Para poder seguir al Profesor, debes de registrarte aquí.Profesora y experta en redes sociales. Formadora de docentes, [...]
</hgroup>Note: we're correcting the code since this is quite messy, but it's the one we have now
The point is that google has considered that this particular
is more important than the title itself. This would make sense if we were looking for that name, but the search was simply "site:domain.com".
Two things for which this is even more strange are the following:
-
while all the /profesor/%category%/ has the same code, this only happens in some search results and not in all of them; why is it appearing in some pages, but respecting my title in others?
-
the previous code is not the only one in the page, there are about 10 others and some are placed before and some are placed after; so, why this one and not the first or the last?
What is more strange is why this article in particular and not any other of the 10
on the page since some of them are placed before and some of them are placed after.
Provided this situation, we would like to know:
-
is this a common situation? Is it happening to more people?
-
why is it happening? Is it somehow related to
,
<hgroup>and
?
-
why that piece of code and not any other article? and why is it only happening in some pages?
-
more important, can it be corrected or can we take advantage of it somehow?
Thank you in advance. Any light you can shed on this will be well received!
</hgroup>
-
-
Google has been rewriting page titles for years, even on sites like Apple.com. Sometimes it's to better match user intent with the search, and sometimes it's because they think your title tag is spammy. Barry at Search Engine Roundtable has several pieces on this.
-
Thanks for your answer, David.
I believe they should respect what we, brands and developers, set as the important elements for our users. Although, it's their platform and they'll try to do what's best for theirs... (but they're not always right unfourtunately!).
-
Thank you for your answer, Dan. Hopefully, they'll get better at predicting a title; because in this case it's quite bad chosen.
-
We'll try this solution. It looks like it'll help.
Actually, we tried to get rid of the meta title, but our developer insisted in not removing it for some reason.
-
Some people disagree with my advice on this but from what I've seen, it works 85-90% of the time:
-
Remove name="title" content="Conoce los profesores de Startups | Open IEBS "/> as this is a virtual duplicate of <title></span><span>Conoce los profesores de Startups | Open IEBS </span><span class="webkit-html-tag"></title>
-
Add to the header.
I think if you do both these things, next time Google crawls your page, they should use your title.
-
-
I've seen this with our sites too. Title tags, meta descriptions, canonicals, robots.txt, etc. should all be considered just suggestions. Google will look at them and in most cases obey them, but they don't always.
-
Hi Oscar
Sorry not a direct or full answer but just to let you know i have definately seen a few instances of this too i.e. Google coming up with their own titles and replacing the pages actual title tags. If they think they can write a better title than whats in the tag they sometimes do
Cheers
Dan
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
-
Snippet not work for my article in google
I add the script for star snippet in my website but not work in my posts you can see it in this URL https://youtech.ooo/showbox-apk-download/ when I searched in google my custom keyword "Showbox" my competitor show with star snippet in SERP but my site doesn't show snippet stars. Thank You!
Technical SEO | | JackJasonn1 -
Can Google Crawl This Page?
I'm going to have to post the page in question which i'd rather not do but I have permission from the client to do so. Question: A recruitment client of mine had their website build on a proprietary platform by a so-called recruitment specialist agency. Unfortunately the site is not performing well in the organic listings. I believe the culprit is this page and others like it: http://www.prospect-health.com/Jobs/?st=0&o3=973&s=1&o4=1215&sortdir=desc&displayinstance=Advanced Search_Site1&pagesize=50000&page=1&o1=255&sortby=CreationDate&o2=260&ij=0 Basically as soon as you deviate from the top level pages you land on pages that have database-query URLs like this one. My take on it is that Google cannot crawl these pages and is therefore having trouble picking up all of the job listings. I have taken some measures to combat this and obviously we have an xml sitemap in place but it seems the pages that Google finds via the XML feed are not performing because there is no obvious flow of 'link juice' to them. There are a number of latest jobs listed on top level pages like this one: http://www.prospect-health.com/optometry-jobs and when they are picked up they perform Ok in the SERPs, which is the biggest clue to the problem outlined above. The agency in question have an SEO department who dispute the problem and their proposed solution is to create more content and build more links (genius!). Just looking for some clarification from you guys if you don't mind?
Technical SEO | | shr1090 -
Pages to be indexed in Google
Hi, We have 70K posts in our site but Google has scanned 500K pages and these extra pages are category pages or User profile pages. Each category has a page and each user has a page. When we have 90K users so Google has indexed 90K pages of users alone. My question is. Should we leave it as they are or should we block them from being indexed? As we get unwanted landings to the pages and huge bounce rate. If we need to remove what needs to be done? Robots block or Noindex/Nofollow Regards
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Title Tags in 2013
For blog posts do you think it is better to use something like "Atlanta Plumbing Company" or "Choosing an Atlanta Plumbing Company" (article title). I have been using the article titles but I think it might be hindering rankings a bit. I use to use the keyword but it seems a bit spammy now. I want to create titles for the readers but rank well too. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SeattleJoe0 -
Registered Trademark in a Meta Title or Content
I know that registered trademarks don't hurt SEO, however if the trademark is used in the middle of a popular search phrase (see below) will it hurt the site's chanced of getting ranked for this term. Example: Funkybrand® Shoes PS I found one brand that used the trademark Acuvue® contact lenses. thanks!
Technical SEO | | yanaiguana1110 -
Missing page titles
Does anyone know why my SeoMoz crawl reads my page titles differen't to what they truly are on my active site? I changed my pages titles and optimised them several months ago. Is my old page titles still been crawled rather than the new ones how do i fix this is?
Technical SEO | | gimes0 -
Does Google index has expiration?
Hi, I have this in mind and I think you can help me. Suppose that I have a pagin something like this: www.mysite.com/politics where I have a list of the current month news. Great, everytime the bot check this url, index the links that are there. What happens next month, all that link are not visible anymore by the user unless he search in a search box or google. Does google keep those links? The current month google check that those links are there, but next month are not, but they are alive. So, my question is, Does google keep this links for ever if they are alive but nowhere in the site (the bot not find them anymore but they work)? Thanks
Technical SEO | | informatica8100 -
Will Google display the "@" Symbol in a SERP Title?
In our page title's, we'd like to include the "@" symbol. Will google display that symbol in the search results if we include it in the page's title?
Technical SEO | | sftravel0