Why Does Google Keep Changing My Page Titles?
-
I know Google has been doing this for quite some time but how do you "control" what Google will display as your page name?
Lots of my pages come up with a title like "[searched keyword] - [website name]" in the search results. I usually a huge drop in CTR when this happens.
On the other hand, there are some pages which have kept their title intact in the search results.
So what gives? How come one page's title is changed and the other is not?
-
I changed my page title so it has less than 60 chars: now Google is showing MY page title, not theirs.
-
My website isn't listed on dmoz
-
Sometimes you can get 70 characters to show on the SERP, but sometimes it's less. As far as I know, 60 is still the safest threshold.
-
There are many reasons why Google may decide to change your title tag in the SERPs besides the length, however. As your example shows, Google likes titles that are keyword rich, concise, and branded. The closer your titles match the search query -- and your page -- the less likely they are to be rewritten. You aren't using boilerplate templates for your titles are you (or auto generated ones)?
Would you mind sharing some examples of titles that have remained intact as well as ones that have been changed by Google?
-
The title tags are actually at risk of being truncated (or, in some cases, replaced) when they are too wide now. So a title of around 100 character can in theory show up in the SERPs without being cut off if it uses primarily thin letters. The ideal pixel width, however, is still somewhat of a mystery -- somewhere around 500px.
-
If google is just adding website name it could be because of dmoz info research
-
I shortened the title and see how it goes in a few weeks.
-
Isn't it 70?
One particular title I'm looking at currently has 68 chars.
-
Are you ensuring that your title tags come in under 60 characters? They seem to be rewriting the long ones more often.
-
Yeah but it sucks when the result just above yours is something like:
[keyword] Special Discount 50% Off - [Website Name]
-
You can't control this, I don't think. Google seems to think Keyword - Website Name is better for searchers.
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
-
Should We Wait To Launch a Redesigned Site After Google's Core Web Vitals & Page Experience Algo Update
We are redesigning our WordPress site (over 1300 posts and pages) and are on schedule to launch in May of 2021. Should we wait for after Google's Core Web Vitals & Page Experience algorithm update?
On-Page Optimization | | opiates0 -
For an e-commerce product category page that has several funnels to specific products, for SEO purposes does it matter whether the category page's overview content is above or below those funnels?
We manage an e-commerce site. On a category page, there are several funnels to specific products. We moved the category overview content below those funnels to make it easier for users to quickly get to products. Seems more user friendly to me, but could that move of the main content to the lower part of the page be a negative ranking factor?
On-Page Optimization | | PKI_Niles0 -
More Singular KW Targeted Landing Pages vs. Less Multiple KW Targeted Landing Pages
So my question is... I have a adopted a site which currently ranks quite well for some industry competitive keywords with a number of poor quality landing pages which specifically target a singular keyword. I am wondering if its worth merging some of these pages together into one authoritative, better quality landing page targeting multiple keywords (as the intent for some of these keywords are largely the same). What i don't want to do is jeopardise the existing rankings in doing so. The alternative option would just be to improve the content on the existing landing pages without merging. What are peoples thoughts on this? Are there any positive case studies out there where merging has had a positive effect? Any help would be great. Regards,
On-Page Optimization | | NickG-1231 -
Wordpress 'Hide Title' Feature, does this help shorten title length
Im wondering if anyone with some Wordpress experience can help me. I am using Yoast to create my page titles, but yet Moz tells me that my page titles including my actual page title tag which is 'dumfries wedding photography | Hemera Visuals' by clicking on the 'hide title' feature in wordpress will this in turn stop wordpress from automatically adding my page title and therfor bring my title length down drastically? And if so will I have to wait till google next crawls my page to see if this works? Kind Regards Cameron.
On-Page Optimization | | hemeravisuals120 -
Why Google did not index exactly these 2 pages? Any ideas?
Dear Community, on 27th of July I relaunched my own website and submitted the sitemap as well I send the index-page to crawl it including all linked pages. Already the next day the new pages have been indexed. Today I checked them manually if they have been indexed. The result is that 2 of 13 pages have not been indexed, here marked in bold: http://inlinear.com/
On-Page Optimization | | inlinear
http://inlinear.com/suchmaschinenoptimierung-online-marketing.php
http://inlinear.com/design/
http://inlinear.com/design/printmedien-gestaltung.php
http://inlinear.com/design/corporate-design-und-corporate-identity.php
http://inlinear.com/design/corporate-raum-design.php
http://inlinear.com/webentwicklung/
http://inlinear.com/virtueller-rundgang-360grad-fotografie.php
http://inlinear.com/business-atlas-online-verzeichnis.php
http://inlinear.com/baudokumentation-bauueberwachung.php
http://inlinear.com/ueber-uns.php
http://inlinear.com/blog/
http://inlinear.com/kontakt/ The page "/design/" (which is the index.php of this folder should be the main-page because its about WEB DESIGN.
Should I create a copy and call it /design/web-design.php? May be Google prefers a meaningful URL than the index.php? So I put then a rel=canonical to web-design.php in my index.php? design/corporate-design-und-corporate-identity.php
The URL is a little long, but this should not be the reason? Or might be a reason that another page which is still in the index, but not online anymore (even redirecting to /design/) is still more dominant? Strange.... orshould I simply wait a little or try submitting these to sites manually to google? When checking Google Webmasters Tools Google tells me that just 3 pages have been indexed.
When I was checking which page is indexed or not I checked each URL with the site-search option:
site:inlinear.com/pageX.php ... when Google shows this page, it was a sign that it was indexed but why webmasters tools show up only 3 pages? (see screenshot) Do you have any ideas?
Thank You 🙂 indexed.png0 -
How To Change Wordpress Category Title
My categories are indexed and I want to change the category page title. At present it just defaults to the category name but I want to set a different page title. For example I want the category to be 'Motor Cars' but I want the category page title to be 'Buy Motor Cars - New And Used'. How can I do this?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Page Title
Hi All, I am wondering if you could help me please. I am getting the following result after I run my On-Page Analysis Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements _Easy fix _ <dl style="font-style: normal;"> <dt>Page titles</dt> <dd>"Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin -" and "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove all but a single page title element.</dd> </dl> Does this mean that i have 2 pages that are nearly identical or i should only name a page with one word? The reason i ask is because i have 1 page called "Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin" and another called "Aquashowers-Dublin Shower Repair" I don't have a page called "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin" (with the space inbetween the words and the hyphen) Any help would be great. Thanks again Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Blog page outranks static page for KW -- why?
Blog page ranks 10 in Google, while the static page is on page 7. What makes it more interesting is that the blog page scores an "F" with the Term Target tool while the static page scores an "A". Static page has more inbound links and a mR/mT of 3.89/ 4.54 vs. 3.71/ 4.14 for the blog page. Any ideas on how to approach this one?
On-Page Optimization | | 540SEO0