Google is not respecting the meta title
-
We're experiencing a peculiar situation with Google not respecting our meta <title>.</p> <p>As you can see in the first image (search result), the title <a href="http://open.iebschool.com/profesores/startups/">for the page</a> is a part of the content. This is relatevely normal for the description, but we never heard of Google doing this before.</p> <p>In the code, the <title> and meta description are correctly implemented.</p> <blockquote style="background-color: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> <p><meta name="description" content="Profesores, tutores, autores y docentes 2.0 de Open IEBS. Conoce su Biografía, experiencia, reputación, conexiones sociales y las valoraciones de alumnos."/><br /><title>Conoce los profesores, tutores, autores y docentes de Open IEBS.</title>
In a further research, we discovered that the title which is using is an
in anwith the following code (cleaned and simplified for the question):
<hgroup>
Pilar Soro
0 Seguidor
Para poder seguir al Profesor, debes de registrarte aquí.Profesora y experta en redes sociales. Formadora de docentes, [...]
</hgroup>Note: we're correcting the code since this is quite messy, but it's the one we have now
The point is that google has considered that this particular
is more important than the title itself. This would make sense if we were looking for that name, but the search was simply "site:domain.com".
Two things for which this is even more strange are the following:
-
while all the /profesor/%category%/ has the same code, this only happens in some search results and not in all of them; why is it appearing in some pages, but respecting my title in others?
-
the previous code is not the only one in the page, there are about 10 others and some are placed before and some are placed after; so, why this one and not the first or the last?
What is more strange is why this article in particular and not any other of the 10
on the page since some of them are placed before and some of them are placed after.
Provided this situation, we would like to know:
-
is this a common situation? Is it happening to more people?
-
why is it happening? Is it somehow related to
,
<hgroup>and
?
-
why that piece of code and not any other article? and why is it only happening in some pages?
-
more important, can it be corrected or can we take advantage of it somehow?
Thank you in advance. Any light you can shed on this will be well received!
</hgroup>
-
-
Google has been rewriting page titles for years, even on sites like Apple.com. Sometimes it's to better match user intent with the search, and sometimes it's because they think your title tag is spammy. Barry at Search Engine Roundtable has several pieces on this.
-
Thanks for your answer, David.
I believe they should respect what we, brands and developers, set as the important elements for our users. Although, it's their platform and they'll try to do what's best for theirs... (but they're not always right unfourtunately!).
-
Thank you for your answer, Dan. Hopefully, they'll get better at predicting a title; because in this case it's quite bad chosen.
-
We'll try this solution. It looks like it'll help.
Actually, we tried to get rid of the meta title, but our developer insisted in not removing it for some reason.
-
Some people disagree with my advice on this but from what I've seen, it works 85-90% of the time:
-
Remove name="title" content="Conoce los profesores de Startups | Open IEBS "/> as this is a virtual duplicate of <title></span><span>Conoce los profesores de Startups | Open IEBS </span><span class="webkit-html-tag"></title>
-
Add to the header.
I think if you do both these things, next time Google crawls your page, they should use your title.
-
-
I've seen this with our sites too. Title tags, meta descriptions, canonicals, robots.txt, etc. should all be considered just suggestions. Google will look at them and in most cases obey them, but they don't always.
-
Hi Oscar
Sorry not a direct or full answer but just to let you know i have definately seen a few instances of this too i.e. Google coming up with their own titles and replacing the pages actual title tags. If they think they can write a better title than whats in the tag they sometimes do
Cheers
Dan
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
-
Google Listing Brand Name as Page Title rather than actual set Title
Any search result including our website is displaying our search result title like this: "Brand Name: Partial Page Title" instead of what it should be "Page Title" (as an example). Where is the "Brand Name:" coming from? We've verified we don't have any code that could cause this, and we're blocking in robots.txt directory listings being used for our search result title/meta. This isn't happening for our competitors. Any ideas on why this is, and if it's something we can control?
Technical SEO | | Closetstogo0 -
What does Google PageSpeed measure?
What does the PageSpeed tool actually measure? Does it say that a webserver is fast or slow? Thanks in advanced!
Technical SEO | | DanielMulderNL0 -
Special Characters in Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Do special characters, such as the "&" symbol or a "," in title tags and meta descriptions negatively affect your ranking in search engines? Any feedback is much appreciated. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | ZAG1 -
Google Places, Google Plus, Oh my!
Ok - So I am in the position to try and clean up the current Google places nightmare for a company. Right now there is about 3 or 4 different google places listings for them that they have no control over. So here is what I did: 1. I took control of them all by verifying via phone and confirmed all of them. 2. I suspended all the listings but 1 3. I edited the one listing to be accurate and complete.
Technical SEO | | DylanPKI
Then I waited, and waited... A month later, the old listings are still up and none of the changes to the one listing have been made. Today it gets a bit more complicated. Today I created a Google+ page for the business which seems like it may end up adding yet ANOTHER Google Places listing, is that correct? They are sending a post card to verify, but I have the page all set up ready to go and plan on tying it to the website. I am not exactly sure what my specific question is, but I am looking for any advice anyone has on the best way to go about this situation. Thank you in advance!0 -
Hit by Google
My site - www.northernlightsiceland.com - has been hit by google and Im not sure why. The traffic dropped 75% last 24 hours and all the most important keywords have dropped significantly in the SERP. The only issue I can think of are the subpages for the northern lights forecasting I did every day e.g. http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/northern-lights-forecast-iceland-3-oct-2012/ I have been simply doing a copy/paste for 1 month the same subpage, but only changing the top part (Summary) for each day. Could this be the reason why Im penalized? I have now simply taken them all down minus the last 3 days (that are relevant). What can I do to get up on my feet again? This is mission critical for me as you can imagine. Im wondering if it got hit by this EMD update on 28 sept that was focusing on exact match domains http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4501349-1-30.htm
Technical SEO | | rrrobertsson0 -
Google Reconsideration Request (Penguin) - Will Google give links to remove?
When Penguin v1 hit, our site took a hit for a single phrase (i.e. "widgets") due to the techniques our SEO company was using (network). We've since had those links cleaned up, and our rankings have not recovered. Our SEO company said they submitted a reconsideration request on our behalf, and that Google denied it and didn't provide which links we needed removed. Does Google list links that need removing if they are still not happy with your link profile?
Technical SEO | | crucialx0 -
How to disallow google and roger?
Hey Guys and girls, i have a question, i want to disallow all robots from accessing a certain root link: Get rid of bots User-agent: * Disallow: /index.php?_a=login&redir=/index.php?_a=tellafriend%26productId=* Will this make the bots not to access any web link that has the prefix you see before the asterisk? And at least google and roger will get away by reading "user-agent: *"? I know this isn't the standard proceedure but if it works for google and seomoz bot we are good.
Technical SEO | | iFix0