Big change to title tags in SERPs for me, anyone else?
-
Beginning today, when I search in incognito mode, Google is giving me extremely limited titles, and not really going off of the title tag. The results are horrible for users, and make me nervous as an SEO. Image attached below:
-
I can't replicate it, but I wouldn't assume it's a glitch. Google is taking a lot more liberties with titles and snippets lately, and that's going to continue. It looks like they're going to remove display URLs (or rewrite them to paths) on mobile, and that may go to desktop, too.
In some cases, this can be a sign that Google thinks the title tag is either (a) a poor match to the query, or (b) too long or too spammy. If you're seeing title tags being rewritten frequently, you may want to revisit them in the context of that query. You can't 100% stop Google from rewriting, but there are ways not to encourage it.
-
Yeah, I figure it's a glitch, but never seen it before, and with their mobile stuff rolling out, I could see them testing title shortening tactics.
Still happening in incog every time, and never when I'm logged in.
-
I'm not seeing that in my incognito searches at all (or in logged in searches either.)
I wouldn't worry too much about it as an SEO. As you said, it's not a really good experience. Google would want to rectify that if it was a bug - it can't be a long term feature to show worse titles & low quality results. That just doesn't make sense from their business point of view.
Odd search result though, thanks for sharing it. I'll keep my eyes out too.
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
-
Looking to condense SERP reults
For several of our keywords we have two listings on page 1 of the SERP's, both pages on the same domain. It's the "top"
Algorithm Updates | | absoauto
level category and than sub category within that top level category. Ideally, we could condense and have just the one result, at a higher position in the SERP. I thought Google would eventually do this for us as I've seen in the past, but it's been a few years now and still hasn't happened. Any suggestions?0 -
Google SERPs showing blog comments in Answer Box?
I was recently researching Schema markup for local businesses and I was presented with an Answer Box that used blog comments as answers (at least I feel that's what they were attempting to show). This is what is says currently when I search for "schema markup hours" (screenshot also attached): 12 thoughts on “How to Use Schema Markup for Local SEO” Lauren says: March 11, 2013 at 2:22 pm. ... souleye says: March 11, 2013 at 3:29 pm. ... Daniel Bennett says: March 11, 2013 at 8:51 pm. ... sammy. says: ... Nathan says: March 11, 2013 at 11:53 pm. ... Rishav says: March 12, 2013 at 5:51 am. ... Paul Sherland says: ... keyword removed says: Right now it shows the time and date of the comment, but is this something that's new or has it been around? Thanks in advance! tp5y1od.png
Algorithm Updates | | TomBinga11250 -
Has Google Authorship been completely removed from SERPs?
Noticed today that when I search (non-personalised search, incognito etc.) some of my pages on Google ALL references to authorship have now been completely removed. Does anyone know when this change occurred? I might be a bit slow this week (or last week) with concentrating on projects. I know like others that photos went some time back but now there are no author details being displayed. Just the page title and description. David
Algorithm Updates | | David-E-Carey1 -
SERP Question - Site showing up for national term over local term recently
Hey Moz, This has been happening to me with a couple of clients recently and I wanted to kick it out to the community and see if anyone else has experienced it and might be able to shed some light on why. (Disclaimer: Both clients are in the elective healthcare space)
Algorithm Updates | | Etna
Scenario: Client's site is optimized for a fairly competitive "procedural keyword + location" phrase. Historically, the site had been ranking on the first page for a while until it suddenly dropped off for that query. At the same time, the page now ranks on the first page for just the procedural term, without the location modifier (obviously much more competitive than with the location modifier). Searches on Google were set to the city in which the client was located. Not that I'm complaining, but this seems a little weird to me. Anyone have a similar situation? If so, any theories about what might have caused it? TL;DR - Site ranked on 1st page for "keyword + location modifier" historically, now ranking on 1st page for "keyword" only and not found with "keyword + location modifier" TRQd9Hu0 -
How big is the effect of having your site hosted in the country you're targeting?
Other than having a ccTLD domain and assigning your target country in Google Webmaster Tools' "geotargeting" feature, how big is the effect of having your site hosted in the country you're targeting? Is it really necessary? or it is just a small signal? Thanks in advance! 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | esiow20131 -
Does the page title keyword count in anchor text when link is web address?
If someone links to my plumbing site with this link as the anchor text: http://www.plumbers.com/austin-plumbers.html does the key phrase "austin plumbers" get counted in the anchor text by google or is this a sample of anchor text that google ignores? Thanks mozzers! Ron
Algorithm Updates | | Ron100 -
Google and Content at Top of Page Change?
We always hear about how Google made this change or that change this month to their algorithm. Sometimes it's true and other times it's just a rumor. So this week I was speaking with someone in the SEO field who said that this week a change occurred at Google and is going to become more prevalent where content placed at the "top of the fold" on merchant sites with products are going to get better placement, rather than if you have your products at top with some content beneath them at the bottom of the page. Any comments on this?
Algorithm Updates | | applesofgold0 -
Today all of our internal pages all but completely disappeared from google search results. Many of them, which had been optimized for specific keywords, had high rankings. Did google change something?
We had optimized internal pages, targeting specific geographic markets. The pages used the keywords in the url title, the h1 tag, and within the content. They scored well using the SEOmoz tool and were increasing in rank every week. Then all of a sudden today, they disappeared. We had added a few links from textlink.com to test them out, but that's about the only change we made. The pages had a dynamic url, "?page=" that we were about to redirect to a static url but hadn't done it yet. The static url was redirecting to the dynamic url. Does anyone have any idea what happened? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | h3counsel0