Page title in SERP question
-
Has anyone typed in a phrase in Google and seen their listing on the SERP, but the page title on the Google SERP is not what the CMS is set to ?
Ie the page title in the SERP is not what is expected? Something related to the company, but not what is set on the CMS…
Very odd – has anyone seen something like this before? What could be causing it? Is there a way to change it?
-
Barry Schwartz has written about the last part (when it's not a DMOZ listing) at http://www.seroundtable.com/google-title-selection-12989.html. There have also been several comments in Q&A about Google not using either the site's title tag or the DMOZ entry for the title in the SERP.
-
Yes- I did not mention this in my other response. Adam is correct also, it could be that Google has an outdated index.
-
Sometimes Google will display the title and meta element of a DMOZ listing. If you are listed in the DMOZ open directory project, simply put the following to your head section and it will default back to what you actually have on the page.
Sometimes, Google will also change the Title and description elements in the SERPs for user experience. It's difficult to see how or why, but it does happen. Does this help?
-
Yes, I've seen this more than once. There are two causes I'm aware of:
-
Google hasn't updated its index and is showing an old version of your page.
-
Google is getting the title from elsewhere, such as DMOZ (they can and will do this in some cases).
-
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
-
Wordpress Post as Slideshow - One long page vs many short pages?
We are working on implementing a slideshow format for some of the posts on a website, and it appears that using this format breaks a long post into several shorter pages. That's what we want from a user experience standpoint, but are wondering if there are negative SEO implications from having the content broken up in this way, and whether search engines will view it as one longer page or several very short pages? Here is an example: http://www.forthebestrate.com/10-cheap-ideas-for-summer-fun/ Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | ILM_Marketing0 -
I have a question about having to much content on a single page. Please help :)
I am working on a music related site. We are building a feature in our system to allow people to write information about songs on their playlist. So when a song is currently being played a user can read some cool facts or information about the song. http://imgur.com/5jFumPW ( screenshot). Some playlists have over 100 songs and could be completely random in genre and artist. I am wondering if some of these playlists have over 5,000 words of content if that is going to hurt us? We will be very strict about making sure its non spammy and good content. Also for the titles of the content is it bad to have over 100 h3 tags on one page? Just want to make sure we are on the right track. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | mikecrib10 -
A question on cached pages
Hi all. I have been testing different ways of writing the text on the homepage of the website www document-management-solutions co.uk because we are ranking very low for the keyword Document Management Software. I've recently learnt about pages being 'cached' and wanted to just clarify something. The last time the page was cached was on 26th March. I have made changed to the homepage since then and wanted to see how it has affected our ranking. Will I not be able to know if it has had a positive/negative effect until the next time our page is cached? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | janc0 -
Google Indexed = 35, 445 pages, Bing Indexed = 243 pages... Why?
Dear MozSquad, Can anyone check our site and let me know if there's anything super apparent that would cause Bing to treat us like a bum on the street? I recently made some structural changes which really helped with Google, but Bing didn't even budge. It's a lot harder to keep up with all the SEO initiatives I have in mind with it being a small start-up where I'm responsible for planning the entire Internet Marketing campaign, giving constant input on UX and site design, etc on top of 900 other things, so I figured it'd be a good time to use The Moz to help a brother out. Ideas? Domain: homeandgardendesignideas.com (yeah, I know it's a little long =P)
On-Page Optimization | | zDucketz0 -
Why would my homepage be ranked lower (Page Rank 2) than my other pages on the site (PR3) ?
Why would my homepage be ranked lower (Page Rank 2) than my other pages on the site (PR3) ?
On-Page Optimization | | dmurtagh0 -
Too many on page links
Our home page (and 1400 of our other pages) have well over 100 links, going beyond the recommend amount. Our competitors have less on page links (to other pages on their site) and way more link popularity so we are trying to figure out the best solution for this without hurting our sites conversions and usbaility.
On-Page Optimization | | iAnalyst.com0 -
URL question
Hi guys, the pro campaign thing you got going is wicked, love it. I'm recieving good results with my keywords and have noticed that categories that go beyond sub/sub/sub don't do to well. So I wanna move those that do one step up which makes it go from: http://spytunes.com/practice-guitar/advanced-routine/scales/aeolian to here http://spytunes.com/practice-guitar/advanced-routine/aeolian The existing menu system that follow all these categories across the site will soon go so it won't be a user friendly problem, I will have other type of menus. But, and here is the question: Would I greatly benefit from taking the non existent menu away and just go for: http://spytunes.com/practice-guitar/aeolian while i'm at it? Or do I stick with my current structure? I guess my real question is; how much is there to flat URLs? Cheers -dan lundholm spytunes.com
On-Page Optimization | | spytunes0 -
Are duplicate titles an issue for pages I don't need ranking for?
A client has a load of duplicate page titles on their site. However, to cut a long story short, most of these pages are pointless and therefore we don't need ranking for them. As such, I'm not concerned whether any of the pages with duplicate content on them are ranked or not..... unless having duplicate page titles / content on these pages could mean that other pages on the site, like the homepage, don't rank as high because of this. Do I need to worry about duplicate titles on these pages, or can I ignore duplicate content on pages that I don't want to be ranked? Hope that makes sense!
On-Page Optimization | | RiceMedia0