Why are apostrophes and other characters still showing as code in my titles?
-
Hi,
I have a WordPress-based site and overall everything is working well. However, I can't seem to figure out how to get apostrophes and other characters to display normally.
Now, the problem isn't that they are displaying as code to normal visitors or up in the title bar, they are displaying as code to Google's bots as well as to SEOMOZ.
Example:
Normal visitor sees:
About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts
Google and SEOMOZ see:
About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts
I've played around with different ways of typing the title (not using character codes vs. using character codes) and nothing seems to work.
Any help or explanation would be appreciated.
-
Gabriel-
It's no problem for these codes to appear in other sections of the page. There are many character sets out there, and what may appear great to you (without codes) looks like gibberish to someone else. The codes help make for a uniform experience for everyone. For instance, there are no "smart quote" keys on your keyboard, yet some programs (like Word) will automatically insert these for you. To have these on a web page most systems will convert these to codes for you. The ampersand, however, falls into this category since it's often an escape character for other characters.
So, the place we're still really most concerned about is the meta title. I'm not sure why the mb_convert_encoding() function didn't work for you?
If you'd like me to take a closer look feel free to message me. This is solvable - I've done it before on WP sites.
-
One more thing - I've noticed that Google, SEOMOZ, and Firefox's View Source all show apostrophes, ampersands, and other characters as code not just in the title tag but also throughout the body of the page - so it is a general problem.
-
I actually removed site caching because it was causing some problems. But yes, I had it on previously.
I'm wondering if the wordpress function - wp_texturize - is doing something funny to the titles...
-
Gabriel-
Do you have some sort of site caching turned on?
-
Fixed some of the other issues with my site (had a bunch of white spaces in my php files) but this is still not working. I inserted your code and it doesn't break anything, but it doesn't work either from what I can tell...
-
Gabriel, I think we're close here... give this a try:
<title></p> <p><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?></p> <p><?php echo mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo('name', 'display'), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES'); ?></p> <p></title>
-
Okay, I found the line:
<title><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>
And I tried inserting your code multiple ways but now Fetch as Googlebot is saying the site is unreachable. I've reversed but still get same problem...
Strange stuff.
-
Look in your header.php file. Here's what the <title>tag code might look like. Again, you may need to wrap the mb function around more than one piece. This should get you started.</p> <blockquote style="color: #5e5e5e; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; 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><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><title><?php</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">/*</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>Print the <title> tag based on what is being viewed.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span> */</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">global $page, $paged;</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">wp_title( '|', true, 'right' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog name.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>bloginfo( 'name' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog description for the home/front page.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">$site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $site_description && ( is_home() || is_front_page() ) )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo " | $site_description";</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add a page number if necessary:</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $paged >= 2 || $page >= 2 )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo ' | ' . sprintf( __( 'Page %s', 'oldheidelbergdeli' ), max( $paged, $page ) );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">?></title>
-
Thanks for looking into this. Approximately where would I place this code?
-
This worked for me....
$site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');
The text is getting encoding in the second half of your meta tag, so if you convert the encoding you should be able to get around this. You may need to apply this to several sections of that depending on what's going on... check the tag out on several pages.
Let me know how it works out.
-
Well what would be the html entity code for a standard apostrophe. And even if that is solved, the & is still not displaying correctly.
I've searched many forums for the answer but nothing seems to be coming up!
-
Hi Gabriel,
' Looks like an html entity code for some non-standard apostrophe. Not sure why though, it looks normal. Your apostrophe might need to be changed to a single quote instead.
-
I've done what you've said and this is what I've come up with:
<title><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>
Does anything look odd?
-
Ahh, you are right about the first ampersand. You should probably take a look at the wp_title() function and see if it's doing any html_special_chars filtering. Again, if nothing else seems to work, you could change up the "and" remove the possessive on Vancouver.
-
Thanks for the quick reply. I tried doing that but not luck. The odd thing is that using Google's Webmaster tools, I see that the meta title and some of the headings have the code in them whereas other body text doesn't. Either way, I need to resolve this.
I tested a page and here are a couple of lines:
<code><title>IT & Web Services | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts</title> Odd how the first & (and) looks fine whereas the second doesn't.</code>
-
Hey Gabriel-
Quick and dirty... you could change the meta title to Function 5 - Metro Vancouver IT and Web Experts.
Have you tried putting the full & in the meta title? There might be a double-conversion issue going on there.
-John
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
-
Duplicate page titles for blog snippets pages
I can't figure the answer to this issue, on my blog I have a number of pages which each show snippets and an image for each blog entry, these are called /recent-weddings/page/1 /2 /3 and so on. I'm getting duplicate page titles for these but can't find anywhere on Wordpress to set a unique title for them. So http://www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/recent-weddings/…/2/ has the same title as http://www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/recent-weddings/…/3/
Technical SEO | | simonatkinsphoto0 -
Robots.txt & meta noindex--site still shows up on Google Search
I have set up my robots.txt like this: User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock
Disallow: / and I have this meta tag in my on a Wordpress site, set up with SEO Yoast name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/> I did "Fetch as Google" on my Google Search Console My website is still showing up in the search results and it says this: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt" This site has not shown up for years and now it is ranking above my site that I want to rank for this keyword. How do I get Google to ignore this site? This seems really weird and I'm confused how a site with little content, that has not been updated for years can rank higher than a site that is constantly updated and improved.1 -
What is the best way to show content in Listing Pages?
If it is e-commerce site and a product listing page there is always a conflict how to show the content? As per my understanding we can show content in two different ways. 1. To show little content and use **Read more. (**In this case there is a direct message to the google: Here is the content visible and rest content is hidden but available for visitors to read more 2. Can use** Scroll bar**. So here is the message to Google and visitors that my full content is available here. So just scroll down to read further. So I want to know that which method of showing content is best and it's impact of SEO where there is UI constraint or both the method is ok without any SEO impact. Please share your suggestions. DCdRJpH
Technical SEO | | kathiravan0 -
Why has google stopped showing one domain and switching to showing another that points to the same website?
My client has a website here: http://www.savannahchiropractic.com/ The site ranked really well for searches for the term "savannah chiroprtactor". Sometime last week (April 21 mobilegeddon?) the site slipped in rankings, but reappeared under the domain name: "www.whitemarshchiropractic.com" Both URLs go to the exact same site. and I don't even think that the whitemarshchripractic.com site is a redirect. I'm not sure how it's setup, but it's definitely not a duplicate site. The ranking is still lower than the savannahchiropractic.com site, but now appears. Anyone have any insights on this?
Technical SEO | | aj6130 -
Newbie Duplicate Title Question
We recently update our website with DNN 6. Once the upgrade was done, I kept recieving log in links on my duplicate title and duplicate content error reports. Is anyone familiar with how to stop these links from showing up? Example of link: http://www.faisongroup.com/Login/tabid/750/Default.aspx?returnurl=%2F Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Technical SEO | | VeronicaCFowler0 -
Google Showing Multiple Listings For Same Site?
I've been optimizing a small static HTML site and have been working to increase the keyword rankings, yet have always ranked #1 for the company name. But, I've now noticed the company name is taking more than just the first position - the site is now appearing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd position (each position referencing a different page of the site). Great.. who doesn't want to dominate a page of Google! ..But it looks kind of untidy and not usually how links from the same site are displayed. Is this normal? I'm used to seeing results from the same site grouped under the primary result, but not like this. any info appreciated 🙂
Technical SEO | | GregDixson0 -
How to show ratings on Google?
One thing I have noticed recently is "review ratings" appearing in the Google search results. I have attached a screenshot which shows an example of this. I think this is a really good feature and helps make a listing stand out in the SERPs, I would certainly be more likely to click this one. My question is how do you code for it so that Google will display it? The URL of the page in question is http://www.footy-boots.com/inter-milan-away-shirt-2011-2012-9430/ 4nXyk
Technical SEO | | ukss19840 -
Duplicate Page Title
The crawl of my website http://www.aboutaburningfire.com revealed an error showing a duplicate page title. Can someone please explain to me how to fix this? I'm not sure what it means or how to fix it. | House Church Chicago, Organic Church, Illinois http://www.aboutaburningfire.com/ 1 Pending Pending House Church Chicago, Organic Church, Illinois http://www.aboutaburningfire.com/index.html |
Technical SEO | | severity0