Google not showing the proper title

[nagar]

I noticed that google is not showing the proper title in the search results. If you search for PhraseExpander, the title that google reports is:

PhraseExpander: Text Expander for Windows

but in the title of the page I've set Text Expander for Windows - PhraseExpander

Why is that? How can I make google report the proper title?

Thanks.

Andrea

[JeusuDigital]

Yeah Matt is right they have been doing this for a while, they also change the description too sometimes.

[BeytzNet]

Interestingly, I also notice it when I do a site search (using Google's site search).

We do not use a CMS for the main site, only for the blog.
Google seem to have taken the suffix from the blog and pasted it as the suffix in the title for all of our pages. We changed the blog's suffix to "- Brand" about a week ago but it may have not been indexed yet...

[FedeEinhorn]

That's strange.

Our title is:

Brand - Title

And only within the index they changed it to Title: Brand

Does this means that I should write the titles as: "Brand: Title" instead of the dash?

Although sometimes it had helped us (having title: Brand), that's only when the searcher goes for something like TITLE. But only for those exact searched.

[MattAntonino]

I think I noticed it in February or so this year.

Here are some articles on it: http://socialmediatoday.com/georgestevens48/1317336/google-rewriting-page-titles-time-brand

http://yoast.com/google-page-title/

http://www.colewood.net/latest-news/google-rewrites-page-titles-and-forces-further-brand-building/

I've had clients start rewriting some of their own titles this way as Google seems to prefer brand:title  I haven't rewritten it on my own site so I can watch the changes happen.  (My own site is far too often a "testing ground." haha

[AlanMosley]

I noticed tis on one of my sites also. How long have they been doing this? I know they have been doing so for a long time if you have no title or a generic title like "home", but it was only recent that I noticed putting the brand at the front.

I also noticed that it is not doing so for my US sites just my Australian sites

[MattAntonino]

Google will often change your page titles if they can find a way to make them relate more to the search query.  They have started focusing on "brands" more and they seem to prefer

Brand: title

If you search my site using just highonseo you will see the

Brand: title

And it's different than the actual site title.

You can limit this a little but using NoODP, NoYDIR but if they want to change it, they will.  Just write really good, related titles and you shouldn't have it changed too often.

[nagar]

I looked at http://yoast.com/google-page-title/ and it seems that google sometimes takes the liberty to change the title of the page displayed in the results.

That's probably the reason why this is happening.

[nagar]

Thanks for the info. I'm using Yoast SEO on wordpress to put the title of the page.

I've tried changing the title removing the -. Let's see what happens.

But as you suggested I've checked another page

if you type "Download PhraseExpander" in google the proper title is not returned again.

The title that is returned is: "Download - PhraseExpander" but the title of the page is <title>Free PhraseExpander Trial - Try our text expander software for free</title>

I did a test and noticed that titles are properly returned in Bing (but not in google). What could be the issue?

Thanks.
Andrea

[danatanseo]

This could possibly have something to do with the way your CMS handles the "-" punctuation elements between your two phrases. If you aren't using actual HTML markup for it, try changing to the HTML version, which would be:  -

Conversely, if you are using the HTML markup, try taking it out and just using the  -

Let me know if that helps at all....of course you will have to wait until Google recrawls the page to find out if it worked. If this is the issue, you will want to check your other pages to make sure it's not happening on them too.