Search snippet ignors title tag :-(

[Nightwing]

Good Morning from 1 degrees C light drizzle Wetherby UK

Ok here is todays puzzle. When I Google "Great Inns" ( http://www.greatinns.co.uk ) I get a search snippet which looks like this: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/great-inns-title-glitch.jpg

As the screen grab illustrates the Title tag is missing and simply says untitled. So my questions is pleased why is google rendering this when in the source code there is a tag eg: <title>Great Inns of Britain - Home – Independent, Historic Inns, Quality Service Any insights welcome :-)</p></title>

[Nightwing]

Thank you for all your replies.. The code is getting cleaned up as I type

[CoreyNorthcutt]

Actually, this happened to me just today, on google.com itself:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/14/picture62u.png/

Got this when searching 'keywordtoolexternal' (because for some reason I don't bookmark stuff like this).  Something strange is up, have never seen this sort of thing before.

EDIT:  JohnMu from Google has stated that these issues are more than likely related to robots.txt:

http://blog.northcutt.com/2012/02/untitled-page-title-in-google/

[KeriMorgret]

For what it's worth, there's another thread about someone having "untitled" show up in the Google SERPs at http://www.seomoz.org/q/google-is-showing-website-as-untitled.

[RobertFisher]

And, 'mornin from Houston where we don't use no C's with our weather reportin' It's 61 (that's with an F).

Nightwing, you may also want to take a look at your overall on page SEO for the site. Every page has the same title tag, meta description and H1. At least the ones I looked at. A good place for you to start is with the Beginner's guide to SEO here on SEOmoz.

Chapter 4 talks about how to set up a page in terms of these key elements.

The Q&A will help you along as you have questions. Good luck.

[Aran_Smithson]

Google Webmaster Tools https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

An integral tool for any SEO campaign.

[Nightwing]

HI Alan, I'm brand new to SEO moz, may i ask whats GWMT please?

[Aran_Smithson]

Surely not. Google is smart enough to ignore white spaces?

[ChrisDyson]

Morning from Leeds!

I agree with Paul, it looks as though it might be because <title>is over 3 lines</p> <p> </p> <pre id="line18"><span class="attribute-name"> </span><span class="attribute-value">esheet" </span><span class="error"><span class="attribute-name">/</span></span>><<span class="start-tag">title</span>> Great Inns of Britain - Home – Independent, Historic Inns, Quality Service </<span class="end-tag">title</span>></<span class="end-tag">head</span>></pre></title>

[Aran_Smithson]

Hi from 1 degree C, overcast (but no drizzle yet) Blackpool,

As Alan says check you GWMT and move your title tag up in the head.

There may be something deeper going on though, I tried searching text from your deeper pages to see if those pages had titles in G serps. But alas I was unable to find the pages in the SERPs after copying and pasting the text. (Some only showed 4 results and yours was not amongst them).

I also Googled a number of your URLs and again I got stumped.

GWMT pronto and see whats occurring!

[pauledwards]

Not far here (Halifax).

Very strange as to me the code seems ok. It not however on a different line for the title tags, not sure this would help having the <title>start on a new line?</p></title>

[AlanMosley]

Goog afternoon from 38C hot and humid Perth Western Australia

google often replaces your title if it is keywords stuffed, yours is a bit stuffed,

but to be sure, go to GWMT and crawl as googlebot and see what it sees. see if your title is showing.

Your title is at the bottem of the head section, it could be that something above is stoping it making it to your title.

Try moving it up higher

Also i would place my encodeing first after the head tag