Why is Google appending a different website's brand name to the end of SERP title?
-
I've recently been shown some SERP results where Google is appending a different website's brand name to the end of the SERP title. It's actually rewriting the brand's name to that of the other website. (This is obviously not ideal.) Why would this be?
The other website doesn't even stock the same product, so there shouldn't be any confusion there. But even if it did, many websites stock the same products. Just confusing...
-
That's a tough one. If you want to DM me the url (or email it to me at marie at marie haynes dot com) I'd be happy to take a quick look.
-
Hi Marie. Thanks for your response.
I'm a bit hesitant to share the examples for my client's privacy. I hope you understand. I do not work on these websites' SEO, I was only asked to look into it to see if I can spot anything that could be causing this. I do, however, work for a larger website that owns both the websites, so that's why I've been asked.
The two businesses share the same address. I was thinking that this may be a factor, but neither site has a Google My Business listing or much in the way of offsite citations. No DMOZ listings.
There are no external canonicals in place, and no mention of the others' URL on the respective sites. Double checked
No duplicate content as both sites sell different products with no overlap, so no duplicate product listings or content. The two sites are not even competing in SERPs for any similar keywords.
-
This is an unusual question. Any chance you could share the example with us?
Do the two websites have much duplicate content between them? Google may be applying a canonical if they think it is duplicate content. Any chance that a canonical was inadvertently placed by you? (I know that's probably pretty unlikely.)
Any chance this has something to do with the businesses' DMOZ listing?
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
-
What is the perfect strategy for a Brand that manufactures the product?
Hello Moz Community, I'm currently associated with one of the brands. It's a nutrition and supplement brand that manufacture supplements. Now, they are running an e-commerce website. Problem: It should be product based website, not an e-commerce website (Like Design, Look and Feel of it.) The problem with SEO: What do you thing like which will work better.
Branding | | Max_
1. Doing Perfect On-Page SEO? And building links for queries like: Best whey protein supplement in "Geo." Buy Protein Powder Online Buy Whey Online "Geo." Generic Terms Brand Name URL All the Remaining Keywords and Anchors OR 1. Doing a perfect On-Page SEO? and
2. Doing massive outreach like Inviting bloggers for guest post (Natural Anchor) Guest Posts (Natural Anchor) Mentions on social media Content Local Business about reciprocal promotions Email outreach Product Reviews Influencers content Link building as mentioned above Q. Tell me which will work the best?
Q. What I've to change in the strategy?
Q. Also tell me how to do a perfect keyword research for product pages? Thank you0 -
Local branding messed up - advice needed
Note: not real names, services, locations used: So we are a single health clinic in Vancouver. Our natural name is GSF Health Clinic. As the most important search term is Health Vancouver by far, we decided to kind of change our brand name to 'GSF Health Vancouver' years ago. Our main competitors name is Health in Vancouver and had had a hard time getting above them in local SERP. But actually, since the change in name, we haven't really improved. As there are also searches for Health Clinic Vancouver, some of our citations are actually GSF Health Clinic Vancouver just to get that keyword in. This variation even happens on our site. Now, looking back, we should have just kept our natural sounding brand name and more importantly, kept the same exact one everywhere. However I'd like advice going forward. So the decision is whether we need city in the brand name - does it make much difference? The options are: GSF Health Clinic Vancouver ("Health Vancouver" is not together, but we still have city name. Current citation on G+ and a few other places. A bit of a mouthful) GSF Health Clinic (Sounds nice, but poor SEO and also no exact citation matches currently so this is a major name change) GSF Health Vancouver (very targeted SEO, sounds okay but not amazing when in a sentence) BTW our domain name is health-vancouver.ca
Branding | | Cooper10 -
Facebook name change error
I keep getting "The Page name you entered does not meet our guidelines. Please review our Page name policies." My name change is well within policy. The page has about 400 fans. I am literally changing a minor aspect. Getting rid of a plural word. Any work around since facebook's site is not working for this?
Branding | | Atomicx0 -
New Product. New Brand. Gmail/Authorship Questions. Need Advice.
I'm in the process of developing a new product and brand name and would like to create all the social media accounts (FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc), including G+ and want it to have it's own Gmail ID like ABCXYZ@gmail.com, so I can set up all accounts using this Gmail ID and if needed down the road, have someone else help manage the accounts so they have that login and my my main Gmail login. My question is, does Google frown upon setting up new Gmail IDs under the same name "Patrick McCoy" as I have my name tied to my personal Gmail account and my company's Gmail account "whiteboardcreations@gmail" both with G+ pages and URLs of /+PatrickMcCoy1 and /+PatrickMcCoy2 respectively. I'd like to have Authorship associated with the new product website and also want the new product to have it's own G+ Business Page to post updates, info, etc., which is why I'm getting a little confused on how I'd do it the right way, What would you do or does it really matter... can my new Gmail account of ABCXYZ@gmail just be /+PatrickMcCoy3 which is associated to my new product/brand name? Thank you and look forward to the feedback!
Branding | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
Google displays the wrong store hours. Can anyone help lead me to the fix?
When doing the following search on Google "Ticket King Milwaukee hours" we see the wrong hours displayed at the top of the page. Just to the left of our places page, you will see "Tuesday hours 8:30-1:00 pm." That 1 pm closing comes up for every weekday, even though we are open until 6 pm weekdays, and 3 pm on Saturdays. I have checked the hours listed on our G+ page, our "Places for Business" page, our "about us" page on our website, and can't find where they are getting this incorrect data. I even went out and checked most of the "List your business" sites that I have registered with.
Branding | | Ticket_King
I have submitted this to Google, but have not heard back. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can fix this, or at least find out where this bad data is coming from? I did find a company blog post from 2010 that listed our ours in a somewhat confusing way, but it was still correct. (I have since fixed that old post.)0 -
Google+ multiple languages
I'm facing the following situation: We have a website (barcelonacheckin.com) with multiple languages. Each language has each own url. For instance English is barcelonacheckin.com/en and Spanish is barcelonacheckin.com/es. If I'm right there seems to be a relation between the number of +1's and ranking in Google. Therefore we created a Google+ business page (https://plus.google.com/101996769636292908838) and we linked it to the english page of our web-site. The number of +1's on our business page is in sync with our English landing page. Now we want also to gather many +1's in the other languages. But it seems that you can only connect one Google+ business page to one web page. My question is. Whould it be smart to make a separate Google+ business page for each language? I wonder how other multilingual web-sites are dealing with Google+.
Branding | | jereprieto0 -
Path to getting reviews on Google and Yelp
Yelp and Google, what would be the right path customers have to follow in order for their reviews to be posted and more importantly, to stay there?
Branding | | echo10 -
Brand Exposure for Increased Awareness
Looking for a mechanism to increase my brand awareness over the web. Has anyone run across a site or method that has helped them expand the awareness of their brand significantly that can be measured?
Branding | | casper4340
