Page Title Displaying differently on Google
-
Hi i am wondering why page title is display differently on google search. The combination of words that are being displayed on google are not on the page and the page title is simply "Camera Filters", however the page is showing as "our range of Camera Filters" (with the same capitalisation).
http://awesomescreenshot.com/0cf4r09y27
I have optimised the age as best i can so it removes the OUR RANGE OF preface, however no luck.
Any info would be appreciated.
Cheers
-
I've actually run into 1) a lot. When you search for site: you get the raw index data, not what Google will show in live SERPs. This is a problem for rich snippet text as well; when Google can read your rich snippets but chooses not to show your mark ups, the mark ups will show up in site: but not in any other searches.
I was able to find the "our range" version when I was searching just now, so this is still a problem, I'm afraid. I've given you my opinion in more detail below.
-
Hi Andrew,
Wow, this is an interesting find! Not something I've heard of before.
Like others have said, Google has recently started to take it upon themselves to rewrite your page title if they feel it's not descriptive enough. Linda shared a link that went over their official guidelines above.
Mmy theory is that "Camera Filters - Digital Camera Gear" isn't descriptive enough to Google (possibly because your brand name looks like a product category, which it may not like in the page title), so it's searching your site for more information about camera filters. I wasn't able to do a full crawl of your site, but I was able to find a few links to the Camera Filters page in Google's index:
- 8% OFF ALL Camera Filters during the 8th Month (which is now redirecting home, but Google still has it in its index): "Click here for our range of Camera Filters."
- Camera Filters - Which one... (which Google also has indexed separately in the blog pagination 2 - Digital Camera Gear "To view our range of filters, please click HERE."
My theory is that Google has an algorithm that identifies low quality page titles and tries to replace them cleverly, but it doesn't have enough information to do that well in your case. To test this out, try writing a more robust <title>like:</p> <p><strong>Camera Filters - UV, Polarisers & More - Digital Camera Gear</strong></p> <p>My guess is, Google will like this better and stick with your page title.</p> <p>Let us know how this goes!</p> <p>Kristina</p></title>
-
Thanks Mark. Turns out it was "user error" All appears fine in an anonymous search.
Thanks for bring up point 2. Is this really a issue as i would have assumed in google webmaster, google would have been "notified" about this. I have done a quick search on this though and cant seem to find to much info. Any idea on how to implement on a Joomla site?
Cheers
Andrew
-
Two things:
-
if you search for "site:digitalcameragear.com.au", you'll see the title as you entered it for the camera filters page. Not sure why it's showing up differently for your search. At first, I thought it was taking some content from the page, but the word "range" doesn't appear on the page anywhere. Very strange. As others said, perhaps in an incognito window it shows up normally.
-
Totally unrelated: the site seems to have issues with duplicate content on http://www.digitalcameragear.com.au/ and http://digitalcameragear.com.au/ (without www). There are no canonical tags, so you should either add canonical tags or redirect one version to the corresponding version across the site.
-
-
Usually when Google updates the title on its own it’s because the title is not optimized or too general against the desired query. The best idea is to redevelop your title and see if it works out for you!
Hope this helps!
-
Both Chrome and Firefox have incognito/private windows as a menu choice. A global way to do non-personalized search is to append ?pws=0 after the Google query URL. (And definitely be sure you are not logged in to your browser.)
-
Hi Linda the search was Camera Filters
I am unsure how do do an anonymous search???
-
What Google will show in the search results is partly based on what the person searched for. What was your search? (I see, based on the bolding, that it included camera and filters--were there any other terms?)
Also, what happens if you do an anonymous search? If you are logged in, you might be seeing things based on your history.
Here is a link with information from Google that might help.
-
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
I am not 100% convinced about this as Camera Filters would be the most relevant page title, not "our range of Camera Filters" with "our" not being capitalised either.
-
I do remember that Matt cuts said something about using criteria to change a web page title. When your title doesn't meet that criteria, Google will change your title.
Here're most important criterias:
- Short enough.
- Relevant to the query.
- describe what in the page and the site.
So, Google finds it more relevant to change your title.
Eslam
-
Thanks for looking.
Sorry, i dont understand.... If the page title is " Camera Filters - Digital Camera Gear"
Then why is google displaying "our range of Camera Filters"??
It should be displaying the title tag.
-
Hey Andrew,
I checked it for you and here's the details,
You page title is: Camera Filters - Digital Camera Gear. (In [title] tag)
You top heading is: Camera Filters .(in [h1] tag)
Simply Google shows your page title, not your top heading. So, you need to change your title tag.
Wish this help,
Eslam
-
Hi, the page has never been named as google is showing it at the moment. It has always just been "Camera Filters"
-
Google download a version of your page to show it in search results with a link to your page, and they update this version with time, perhaps the title of the page is old and Google didn't update it yet.
Eslam
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
-
How to add titles to Pardot landing pages
I have 5 URLs that are "missing titles" however, all 5 are landing pages that were created in Pardot. how would I go about adding the missing title? Would I need to add it on our website platform or in Pardot?
Technical SEO | | cbriggs0 -
Google Ignoring region settings on contact pages
Hi All, I've got an issue with multi-region contact pages. For example, Google favors the UAE other region contact pages for French region searches, when I only want /fr/contact. I've used a Rel-con and set up the website to be pointing to the correct regions.
Technical SEO | | WattbikeSEO0 -
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean?
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean? We have added some text in the pages with keywords thats related the page
Technical SEO | | AlexisWithers0 -
Google Search Results Display URL
Our urls show as www.domain.com/getproduct.aspx?productid=48376 (url #1) in Google search results. When you click on the link and go to the site the URL is www.domain.com/product-name.aspx (url #2) I checked in Google Webmaster Tools (Fetch as Google) and there is a 302 redirect from url #1 to url #2. It also shows a Set-Cookie value, ASP.NET_SessionID= If we make it a 301 redirect instead, will the url displayed in Google search results be the url #2? We need to get rid of the Set-Cookie for crawlers correct?
Technical SEO | | Guy_Huyett0 -
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
Technical SEO | | ofuente
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! AJ2CUSe.png?1?8232 </hgroup>0 -
The word 'shop' in a page title
I'm reworking most of the page titles on our site and I'm considering the use of the word 'Shop' before a product category. ex. Shop 'keyword' | Brand Name As opposed to just using the keyword sans 'Shop.' Some of the keywords are very generic, especially for a top level category page. Question: Is the word 'Shop' damaging my SEO efforts in any way?
Technical SEO | | rhoadesjohn0 -
Why are Google search results different if you are log'd into Google or not?
I get different results when I'm log'd into my Google account associated with my website than if I'm not. The same country is occurring. So how can I rely on the google results I'm seeing? For instance my site is page 1 with the improvements I made based on SEOMOZ if I'm log'd in. Yet I'm not on the first 25 pages if I'm not logged in.
Technical SEO | | Romana0 -
High number of Duplicate Page titles and Content related to index.php
It appears that every page on our site (www.bridgewinners.com) also creates a version of itself with a suffix. This results in Seomoz indicating that there are thousands of duplicate titles and content. 1. Does this matter? If so, how much? 2. How do I eliminate this (we are using joomla)? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | jfeld2220