Title Tag issue
-
Hello,
This is a weird one. I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction.
A couple months ago, we updated trinitypower.com and it was back then that I first noticed this issue, but because the home page title tag was okay and contained the primary terms for that page, I told myself I would circle back.
The problem is that even though Google crawls the site everyday, it does not update the title tag text in it's index.
-
Google: "Trinity Power Rentals" and you will see the title in the index as "Trinity Power: Temporary Power Rentals".
-
Go to trinitypower.com and view source. You will see the title tag in the code as "Temporary Power Rentals - Trinity Power"
The desc tag has been updated correctly, but I can't figure out why not the Title tag. You can look at the cache version in the index of Google. It is showing the latest version of that tag, so I really do not understand what has happened here.
I am using WP Super Cache... maybe a conflict with that? I have dumped it's cache numerous times though.
Please let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Jarrett
-
-
Np!
-
Great, thanks for feedback guys, much appreciated. I was not really that concerned as the Title Google has chosen to use, works. Nice to know that it is not an issue with the code or a plugin conflict.
Thanks again,
J
-
Hi Jarrett,
Max and Robert are both correct. Google sometimes displays different titles based on what they believe is the user's intent. In your case specifically, I think Google is displaying a title tag that makes sense.
Think about it, if someone is using a query that includes your **brand name **they are likely trying to find your website as quickly as possible. By pushing your brand name to the beginning of the title tag it may be easier for the user to recognize that the 1st result is in fact your website.
You can always try different variations of your title tag to see if Google will change it (for example, "Temporary Power Rentals | Trinity Power" or "Temporary Power Rentals by Trinity Power") but in my opinion, because it is a branded search term, Google will probably display your brand name first no matter what.
I personally wouldn't be overly concerned about this specific occurrence.
Hope this clears things up a bit!
-
Hi, rest assured. It has nothing to do with your site or your site's cache. I have seen this happen on my sites as well.
Search Engine Land wrote about this at http://searchengineland.com/advanced-seo-learning-experiments-using-googles-title-tag-changes-example-189850 they link to a Google Support page that states the following:
_If we’ve detected that a particular result has [...] issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources. However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. _
There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query. Once we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site. Users are scanning for their query terms or other signs of relevance in the results, and a title that is tailored for the query can increase the chances that they will click through.
There's also this video from Google Webmaster Tools YouTube channel where Matt Cutts goes over the "Why would Google do that?" question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3HX_8BAhB4
-
Check my comments here: http://moz.com/community/q/has-google-changed-how-it-displays-metatitles-for-business-listings
Analyze your homepage with your preferred keyword density analyzer, and you will find out the top 2 words keyword is "temporary power" and your top 3 words keyword is "temporary power rentals".
Now guess what google think is the most appropriate title in SERP?
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
-
Anchor Tag around a Div
Just Curious if this is an SEO No-No! I have set up the box to do some cool SEO transitions but am curious if I am loosing on a signifigant amount of internal linking considering anchor text or if Google recognizes the h2 as anchor text. Thanks. [ Article Title Article Synopsis Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.](internal-page.html)
On-Page Optimization | | Vspeed0 -
Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements...
Hi guys i'm just going trough some pages with the seomoz one page optimization tool. As one of the "easy fix" suggestions it says: "Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements" "Explanation: Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.Recommendation: Remove all but a single page title element." By single element does it mean 1 single word? Is that realistic?
On-Page Optimization | | Immanuel0 -
Image Alt and Title?
I'm building a quotations website. Each quotation will have between 1 and 5 images (picture quotes) associated with it. The images will be featured as thumbnails (image gallery) on the quote post itself. How should I handle the image alt and title tags so that I rank better for a quote in image search, and also strengthen the ranking signals on the quote post itself? Take for example, a photo of a beach and a photo of the sun. Both have the same quote on it: "Laughter is an instant vacation." Should the quote itself go into the alt tag? while the description of the image goes into the title? Or should the quote go into the title? Would this be correct? Title: Beach with children playing in the sand. Alt: "Laughter is an instant vacation." Title: Sun shining in the sky. Alt: "Laughter is an instant vacation." What about if the quote is very long? Google has said they like when the alt and title tags are short.
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
How serious an issue is Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters)?
Hi, We have about 3000 of these, how serious an issue is this considered? Is it simply the fact that Google won't index the keywords if they are over 70 characters? Could we strip out common words here: 50 Worship Ideas for Small Groups by Stuart Townend | World of Books.com Like 'for', 'by' and probably the '.com'?
On-Page Optimization | | Benj250 -
What is the threshold for a page title to be considered duplicate?
We're trying to find out what percentage of words in a page title need to be the same for it to be considered duplicate? We have search results pages for each country on our site, so the only difference in the page title is the country name and they are all being flagged as duplicate, even though they are not 100% duplicate.
On-Page Optimization | | Odjobob0 -
Duplicate Page Title
Wordpress Category pagination causes duplicate page title errors (ie. when there are so many posts in the category, it paginates them), is this a problem? Your tool is reporting it as a problem... but ProPhoto (my Wordpress provider say it is not a problem). Here are the 2 URL's with the same page title: http://www.lisagillphotography.co.uk/category/child-photography/ http://www.lisagillphotography.co.uk/category/child-photography/page/2/
On-Page Optimization | | LisaGill0 -
Tags in wordpress -Important?
Hello, I use the Wordpress plataform in my blog. What I want to ask is, how important is the tag field in the posts area. Since I have the title tag and meta description how important is that field? Its really a question that was in my mind since I start doing SEO 😛 Tks in advance guys 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | PedroM0 -
Alt tag matching product titles - e-commerce
Hey all, Just wondering if it is ok to match the alt tag to product titles. Imagine an e-commerce site that lists a whole lot of products on any one page for any one category. Each product listing has a thumbnail image beside it. The easiest way to implement this dynamically is to use the product title for the alt tag. Anyone had any experience with this? Is it overkill / spam of keywords - given that the product title is repeated. Our current situation is that our alt tags are simply blank or say 'photo' which is no good, and we have hundreds of thousands of pages. Cheers, Croozie
On-Page Optimization | | sichristie0