Google truncating or altering meta title - affect rankings?
-
I have a site that the title tag is too long and the title is simply the name of the site (I think they get it from ODP, not sure)
Anyway, the rankings for the home page have dropped quite a bit. I'm wondering if the change that Google makes affects rankings (i.e. name of site doesn't have all the keywords).
-
I have a site that the title tag is too long and the title is simply the name of the site (I think they get it from ODP, not sure)
Now if you believe that it is the ODP that is causing the trouble, you can add this Meta tag in the section of the pages -
However, if this has not been the case, it could be that the links that have been built are not in line with the existing title. And sometimes, Google changes the title itself if it feels that the title is not well optimized –
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2012/01/better-page-titles-in-search-results.html
-
While I don't think anyone can say for sure if one specific thing like this could result in lower ranking, IMHO a truncated title is not generally going to be the culprit of rankings drop. However, I do think a truncated title can significantly lower click-thru rate on your organic listings, which could be a factor in rankings (i.e. higher click-thru rate could equal higher rankings).
I always encourage the sites that I SEO to adhere to Google's character limitations and make the most out of the organic real estate Google gives you. It's your chance to get someone to come to your site. If the title/and or description is truncated, it has less chance of being compelling, or containing the information that makes someone want to click through and visit your pages.
Hope that's helpful!
Dana
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
-
Domain not ranking in Google
https://www.buitenspeelgoed.nl/ is a domain acquired by our client. Previously this website was on http://www.buitenspeelgoed-keupink.nl. With the old domain they were ranking top 30 on 'buitenspeelgoed' in google.nl. Now with the new exact match domain they aren't ranking any more (for months). However, the website is indexed, as you can see on http://1l1.be/nz I don't know what to do anymore. Need some advise. What we allready have done the last months: made adjustments to the 301-redirects (this was originaly setup wrong by the webdesigner (de) optimized the homepage on 'buitenspeelgoed' (strange is the fact that the Moz robot can't access the site). Checked the robots.txt to see if the website was blocked for Google Checked the meta robots to see if the website was blocked for Google Disavowed some spammy (old) links which linked to the old domain Checked Search console > Fetch as Google if there isn't any Malware of some kind (and to see if Google can access the site) Checked Search consol to see if there manual spam actions (isn't the case) Checked for duplicate content by copy/paste some texts in Google and see if any other results are showing up (isn't the case for most of the texts) Please let me know what we can do.
Technical SEO | | InventusOnline0 -
Is <title>different from <h1> and "meta tag title"?</title>
hi guys, new to MOZ and SEO. Basic question here. is <title>different from <h1> and "meta tag title"?</p> <p>I have lots of "title missing or blank" errors as reported by a recent Moz crawl. What do i need to add into the pages to clear these? an <h1>? an <title>? or <meta tag title>? </p> <p>Im running a volusion site, and from what ive read (negative & positive) Volusion can be a pain to optimize my SEO as i dont have full access to all my pages.?</p></title>
Technical SEO | | Jerrion0 -
Google not pulling correct Meta Description
For some reason Google is not pulling the meta description for one of our key pages. Instead it just takes the first sentence from the page which makes the description horrible. Why would it be doing this if the meta tag field is populated?
Technical SEO | | inhouseninja0 -
Google Disavow Tool
Some background: My rankings have been wildly fluctuating for the past few months for no apparent reason. When I inquired about this, many people said that even though I haven't received any penalty notice, I was probably affected by penguin. (http://moz.com/community/q/ranking-fluctuations) I recently did a link detox by LinkRemovalTools and it gave me a list of all my links, 2% were toxic and 51% were suspiscious. Should I simply disavow the 2%? There are many sites where is no contact info.
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
Page titles in browser not matching WP page title
I have an issue with a few page titles not matching the title I have In WordPress. I have 2 pages, blog & creative gallery, that show the homepage title, which is causing duplicate title errors. This has been going on for 5 weeks, so its not an a crawl issue. Any ideas what could cause this? To clarify, I have the page title set in WP, and I checked "Disable PSP title format on this page/post:"...but this page is still showing the homepage title. Is there an additional title setting for a page in WP?
Technical SEO | | Branden_S0 -
Google Search memory
Hi we have had the following statement from a member of our Japan office with regards google displaying search results, would anyone be able to give us a definitive answer on this. Google remembers previous non-mobile related searches For example, we already know that we come up on the first page if you select “kaigai keitai” (mobile phone for use abroad) and “UK” where as we don’t for searches where you replace the UK with the US or other countries. This means that if a customer, for example, does a search just on the UK e.g. using words like UK travel, London, millennium dome, etc. and then does a separate search just using the words “kaigai keitai” that google could show us as a link on the first page. However, if an individual did a search on Paris, France, Eiffel Tower, and then did a search for “kaigai keitai”, our link might not appear on the page. I don’t know if we have tested this already, but Google seems to have a very long “memory” and I could see this kind of aspect of Google resulting in us missing significant business from people going to the US, France, Italy, etc. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | -Al-0 -
Backtracking from verification meta tag to the correct Google account is difficult
A Google verification meta tag was created and implemented on a site that I am now responsible for (I took over an SEO project after a long lapse), but no one seems to know what Google account was used to create the meta tag in the first place. I'm finding it very difficult to backtrack from verification meta tag to the Google account, and all the online help is for those having trouble moving forward with the verification. Any suggestions or advice?
Technical SEO | | MaryDoherty0 -
Google Pake Rank of Zero?
Hi! We've been running our website www.opzeggen.nl for a while now, but we still have a google page rank of 0. Searching for a keyword like 'opzeggen' does give us good ranking however. Should I be worried about this? And if so, is there a way to fix this? Best Regards, Pieter
Technical SEO | | greenonline0