Why are my page titles not being honored?
-
If you view source you will see my actual title tag http://www.sqlsentry.com/products/performance-advisor/sql-server-performance
The google results are showing a completely different title tag that we do not want used. This was working properly and I'm not understanding how it got changed. Thanks!
-
I've definitely found that Google seems to take more liberties giving you the title tag of your choosing when your title tag is too long. I also like the pixel width guidelines over the character recommendations. Your title tag is currently 589 pixels wide, vs the recommended 466 maximum.
Fun tool to test it out with: http://www.webshoptimizer.com/page-title-pixel-meter/
Of course, you could change it and create a nice short title tag, and Google may still choose to show something else.
-
There is no way to force Google to use your page title when it displays the search results. Google can change your title for different seearch queries if it thinks your url fits but the title doesn't. That being said you can look at optimising your title to below 70 characters and making sure it is as natural as possible. I can see your page title is 77 characters. Google has recently started only displaying a set pixel width after a redesign - you will find this recent article by doctor Pete useful - http://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool - so the potential title displayed has been further limited in character length, but you can test it with the tool..Doctor Pete states he is comfortable with a length of 55 characters to be dispalyed fully but remember character length can vary quite a bit..Also remember Google still process data past the cut off!
-
Good day! That can be a really frustrating experience, particularly when you've worked hard to write your titles. Alan Bleiweiss gave a good answer on here in the past and it's still relevant - http://moz.com/community/q/why-is-google-changing-my-title-tags
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
-
How do I prevent duplicate page title errors from being generated by my multiple shop pages?
Our e-commerce shop has numerous pages within the main shop page. Users navigate through the shop via typical pagination. So while there may be 6 pages of products it's all still under the main shop page. Moz keeps flagging my shop pages as having duplicate titles (ie shop page 2). But they're all the same page. Users aren't loading unique pages each time they go to the next page of products and they aren't pages I can edit. I'm not sure how to prevent this issue from popping up on my reports.
Technical SEO | | NiteSkirm0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content > Wordpress Comments Page
Hello Moz Community, I've create a campaign in Moz and received hundreds of errors, regarding "Duplicate Page Content". After some review, I've found that 99% of the errors in the "Duplicate Page Content" report are occurring due to Wordpress creating a new comment page (with the original post detail), if a comment is made on a blog post. The post comment can be displayed on the original blog post, but also viewable on a second URL, created by Wordpress. http://www.Example.com/example-post http://www.Example.com/example-post/comment-page-1 Anyone else experience this issue in Wordpress or this same type of report in Moz? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | DomainUltra0 -
How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory". The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Why are pages linked with URL parameters showing up as separate pages with duplicate content?
Only one page exists . . . Yet I link to the page with different URL parameters for tracking purposes and for some reason it is showing up as a separate page with duplicate content . . . Help? rpcIZ.png
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Top pages give " page not found"
A lot of my top pages point to images in a gallery on my site. When I click on the url under the name of the jpg file I get an error page not found. For instance this link: http://www.fastingfotografie.nl/architectuur-landschap/single-gallery/10162327 Is this a problem? Thanks. Thomas. JkLej.png
Technical SEO | | thomasfasting0 -
Page Title Not Displayed in SERPS
Why would a page title not be displayed in the SERPS? Everything appears to be formatted correctly in the code, yet the title of the company gets displayed instead of the page title? Any general idea why this could be happening?
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
301 redirecting some pages directly, and the rest to a single page
I've read through the Redirect guide here already but can't get this down in my .htaccess I want to redirect some pages specifically (/contactinfo.html to the new /contact.php) And I want all other pages (not all have equivalent pages on the new site) to redirect to my new (index.php) homepage. How can I set it up so that some specific pages redirect directly, and all others go to one page? I already have the specific oldpage.html -> newpage.php redirects in place, just need to figure out the broad one for everything else.
Technical SEO | | RyanWhitney150 -
Google not using <title>for SERP?</title>
Today I noticed that Google is not using my title tag for one of my pages. Search for "covered call search" Look at organic result 6: Search - Covered Calls Covered call screener filters 150000 options instantly to find the best high yield covered calls that meet your custom criteria. Free newsletter.<cite>https://www.borntosell.com/search</cite> - CachedNow, if you click through to that page you see the meta title tag is:Covered Call ScreenerEven the cached version shows the title tag as Covered Call ScreenerI am not logged in, so I don't believe personalization has anything to do with it.Have others seen this before?It is possible that "search - covered calls" was the title tag 9 months ago (before I understood SEO); I honestly don't remember. I cleaned all my titles up at least 6 months ago.Can I force Google to re-index the page? Its content has changed a few times in the last few months, and Google crawls my site frequently according to webmaster tools.
Technical SEO | | scanlin0