Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why is Google replacing our title tags with URLs in SERP?
-
Hey guys,
We've noticed that Google is replacing a lot of our title tags with URLs in SERP. As far as we know, this has been happening for the last month or so and we can't seem to figure out why.
I've attached a screenshot for your reference.
What we know:
- depending on the search query, the title tag may or may not be replaced.
- this doesn't seem to have any connection to the relevance of the title tag vs the url.
- results are persistent on desktop and mobile.
- the length of the title tag doesn't seem to correlate with the replacement.
- the replacement is happening at mass, to dozens of pages.
Any ideas as to why this may be happening?
Thanks in advance,
Peter -
Hi Jesse,
Looking through our change log, it seems like our marketing team removed "| Mobify" from all title tags on July 2nd.
They did it because "Mobify" is already in the domain name and is generally mentioned on all pages, so they didn't feel like it was necessary to call it out in the title tags too.
I'm going to add it back and see what happens. Will keep you posted!
Best,
Peter -
Hi again Peter,
That is very interesting and I see your confusion here. I repeated the same test and was given the same results without your brand name in query.. Still when Google is listing the title they are listing your brand name.
It seems to me that they really want your brand name to show in this title. Why? I'm not entirely sure. But that's what they're adding to your title here..
Try shortening your title on that page by a word or two and adding a pipe (|) and "Mobify." Make that your test page for this issue and see what Google does with it when the change populates. I have a funny feeling it might pull your full title at that point.
Most sites out there try to drag their domain/brand into each page title anyway. You can call it "best practice" or just a "funny habit" but I feel like this is what Google is looking for with your site.
I'm incredibly curious, so if you don't mind trying this out and reporting back I would be greatly appreciative.
Thanks and good luck!
-
Thanks for taking your time to answer, Jesse!
Your hypothesis makes total sense, and I was hoping that was the case. Unfortunately, under further inspection, I'm still not sure.
Check this out. We have a page with a title tag "Retail App Engine: The Next Step in Your Mobile Commerce Strategy". I've attached a screenshot of what happens when I search for "Retail App Engine." I don't see why Google would not like our title tag in this case.
If you have any further ideas, I would really appreciate them!
-
If I may chime in, I'm guessing that the search was actually "site:mobify.com mobify" (without quotes). Whether that's right or wrong, however, I know does't answer the question. However, when you do that search, you notice that there are numerous examples of similar occurrences. In each case, the titles are quite long. This situation has been noticed before and there was even a post about it on the Moz blog by Ruth Burr Reedy. In that post, Ruth tracked down a likely possible cause as being that the title provided by the author is too long and because of that Google replaces it with it's best algorithmic alternative.
Peter, try shortening the titles and see if that solves your problem.
-
This was intriguing to me so I dug in a little and I have an initial theory here:
In the example you provided you seem to be searching with your brand name only. "Mobify" is bolded telling me that was a searched keyword.
The title tag for the page in question reads: "25 Top Design Upgrades to Make Your Mobile Revenue Skyrocket [SlideShare]"
My bet is that because you do not have the brand name in your title tag, Google is looking to display something that does carry this particular keyword. In this case it is looking for something with the word "Mobify" in it and finding it in the URL. If you take out the SlideShare portion of your title and replace it with "| Mobify" my guess is this problem will go away.
Look at the other URLs you are having this problem with and tell me if the brand name is missing from it but present in the searched query.
Let me know if this works!
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 tries to index non existing language URLs. Why?
Hi, I am working for a SAAS client. He uses two different language versions by using two different subdomains.
Technical SEO | | TheHecksler
de.domain.com/company for german and en.domain.com for english. Many thousands URLs has been indexed correctly. But Google Search Console tries to index URLs which were never existing before and are still not existing. de.domain.com**/en/company
en.domain.com/de/**company ... and an thousand more using the /en/ or /de/ in between. We never use this variant and calling these URLs will throw up a 404 Page correctly (but with wrong respond code - we`re fixing that 😉 ). But Google tries to index these kind of URLs again and again. And, I couldnt find any source of these URLs. No Website is using this as an out going link, etc.
We do see in our logfiles, that a Screaming Frog Installation and moz.com w opensiteexplorer were trying to access this earlier. My Question: How does Google comes up with that? From where did they get these URLs, that (to our knowledge) never existed? Any ideas? Thanks 🙂0 -
Where did the "Location" go, on Google SERP?
In order to emulate different locations, I've always done a Google query, then used the "Location" button under "Search Tools" at the top of the SERP to define my preferred location. It seems to have disappeared in the past few days? Anyone know where it went, or if it's gone forever? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | measurableROI0 -
What punctuation can you use in meta tags? Are there any Google does not like?
So I know you can use dashes and | in meta tags, but can anyone tell me what other punctuation you can use? Also, it'd be great to know what punctuation you can't use. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Trevorneo1 -
Exact Match Domain & Title Tag / URL
I currently own an exact match domain for my keyword. I have it set up with multiple pages and also a blog. The home page essentially serves as a hub and contains links to all the pages and the blog. My targeted keyword is on its own page and I made the title tag the same as my keyword. As an example the URL for my targeted post looks like this: benefitsofrunningshoes.com/benefits-of-running-shoes I have solid, non-spammy content and clean whitehat earned backlinks directing to that specific page. My concern right now is that the URL looks kinda spammy. The website has been live for about a week and the home page ranks well enough but my targeted page is no where to be found. (it does show up if I manually search via search command "site:benefitsofrunningshoes.com"). I'm wondering if it is acceptable to use the exact keyword in title tag / page url if it is also in the domain as an EMD? Should I change the title tag and leave the URL in? Or should I completely change the title tag and URL and 301 redirect to the new page? I appreciate any help!
Technical SEO | | Kusanagi170 -
SERP Title shows up-with-dashes
Occasionally I see the our 'listings' on Google where the Title line shows up with dashes... like sony-professional-hard-drive - TapeandMedia.com It appears to be the URL shortened and rehashed. This example was after I searched for "Sony PSZ-HA1T" without the quotes. The title for this page is <title></span><span class="html-tag">Sony 1TB Professional Portable External Hard Disk Drive (PSZ-HA1T)</span><span class="html-tag"></title> and the url is http://www.tapeandmedia.com/sony-1tb-professional-portable-hard-drive.asp Link to image: http://i.imgur.com/FmvAn6c.jpg Other searches (like "Sony 1tb PSZ-HA1T") yield normal looking SERP Titles Does anyone know why this happens and what I can do to avoid this? FmvAn6c.jpg
Technical SEO | | BWallacejr0 -
Changing title tags, do we need 301 redirects
I found many duplicate title tags and I'm in the process of changing it Do I need 301 redirects in place when I switch it? I am only changing the title tag. Also, we are switching over to a new site very soon, I am worried that we might be using too many 301 redirect "hops" because we are doing a lot of optimization as well. (video from matt cutts describing 301 redirects and hops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA. Does anyone have any experience in doing too many redirect hops that it affected your rankings? Any good ideas to avoid this?
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
Old URL redirect to New URL
Alright I did something dumb a year a go and I'm still paying for it. I changed my hyphenated URL to the non-hyphenated version when I redesigned my website. I say it was dumb because I lost most of my link juice even though I did 301 redirects (via the htaccess file) for almost all of the pages I could find in Google's index. Here's my problem. My new site took a huge hit in traffic (down 60%) when I made the change and even though I've done thousands of redirects my old site is still showing up in the SERPS and send much if not most of my traffic. I don't want to take the old site down in fear it will kill all of my traffic. What should I do? Is there a better method I should explore then 301 redirects? Could the other site be affecting my current rank since it's still there? (FYI...both sites are built on the WP platform). Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated. Thank you! Joe
Technical SEO | | kaje0 -
New (google) local SERPs has 40 character limit on title length
Should i change my all the page titles for pages that show up in local SERPs to reflect this new limit? Is there any benefit to leaving it at the old limit and having more keywords in there? Or would there be benefit to conforming to google's new standard and having shorter titles?
Technical SEO | | adriandg0
