Has Google changed how it displays metatitles for business listings?
-
Our company now does not display the meta title for company specific searches for certain stores, but not all of them (yet). Is this something new and are there any potential SEO ramifications or benefits?
-
If you want google to pick up the meta title you want you need to tweak your on-page optimization, as per my previous answer.
If you check both homepages, toyota and honda, with some keyword densitiy analyzer tools you will see differences, make changes till you convince google to accept your meta title.
One difference in those pages is pretty obvious once you scan it with a keyword density analyzer.
-
I have attached the examples - Honda is not showing the meta title I have set up for them and Toyota is...
-
I don't think it's all that odd. In fact I think google is doing a good job at trying to match what the user is looking for.
If I search for "leith honda" I am much probably looking for someone named leith related to “honda”, and if you look at the source html of the serp result for your business you will see you have put "leith honda" in a lot of places, image alt, href titles, page body... Google guess that “leith honda” is a better title, when compared to the meta-title of that page, sounds appropriate.
On the other hand when searching for “honda dealer in raleigh” the meta-title, which does contain the three keyword honda+dealer+raleigh sounds just right for what the user may be searching with that query.
-
Google takes your meta-title as a mere suggestion, it usually show the proposed meta-title as “the” title in SERP but you have no guarantee.
If google finds your title is too short, over-used, poorly written, stuffed with keywords, or inadequate for the page content / searched query will sometimes create its own title.
-
I'm not able to replicate what you are saying. Google is showing the correct titles for me.
Any chance you upload a screenshot?
-
Yeah - when comparing Leith Honda versus Leith Toyota (same web providers), the SERP shows Toyota's meta title but for Honda just says 'Leith Honda'. The URLs are www.leithhonda.com and www.leithtoyota.com. When you do a Google search for Honda Dealer in Raleigh the meta title that shows in the SERP is what we have on the website. Very odd...
-
It definitely sounds like something on your site. Can you share the URL or an example of a page where you're seeing this in the SERP in order to better help you? Thanks!
-
We have set meta titles for all of our pages, but the result on the SERP for our business name does not show what we have in the meta title. It just shows the name of our business. I have not seen this before and wonder if this is a change to Google's algorithm and how (if at all) it impacts us...
-
I don't know if I specifically understand what you are asking. Google hasn't changed the way it uses meta titles. If you have not specifically designated the meta title for your pages, your platform might pull information from the page to populate the title tag. Without seeing the actual page I can't be more specific than that.
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
-
Does Google do keyword matching when deciding whether to rank a page?
Hi, another newbie question on keyword research and selection (can't find any information on-line with this low level of detail)... If I've decided that my primary keyword for a given product page is the product name, something like 'AquaPower wet and dry cordless vacuum cleaner', can I assume that it isn't worth additionally optimising the page for 'cordless vacuum' as this has a phrase match in the primary keyword? Is it still worth additionally optimising for 'wet and dray vacuum' which has a broad match within the primary keyword or is Google bright enough to drop the intervening word 'cordless' when deciding whether to rank my page? Thanks for any guidance on this.
Keyword Research | | Alli70 -
Google: Is There a Way to Find Your "Unknown Search Terms"
I believe Google stopped reporting search terms for privacy reasons. All my searches show as "unknown". I found a video that showed how to get around this but it's not current. Is there any way to get your Google terms search information? Thanks, Jo-Ann
Keyword Research | | VinJGirl0 -
Why doesn't Google show my site in the results when searching for my exact URL ?
I haven't done too much work with optimizing the site yet, but I was curious as to why the site doesn't even show up in any of the google results when searching on the exact URL. What could cause this behavior?
Keyword Research | | fryguy1 -
Tag usage based on Google keywords
We are making a site that will be a database of publicity stunts. We used the Google Keyword tool to find a bunch of words related to this. The term itself has similar keywords such as [pr campaigns]. And also there are some derivative keywords as [bad publicity stunts], [famous publicity stunts], [celebrity publicity stunts]. Each bringing in 20-50 monthly searches for the exact term. Some concepts appear slightly differently such as [famous pr stunts] and [famous pr campaigns]. We'd love our pages to appear on as much of these keyword searches as possible (overall we expect about 3k-4k searches /month on exact matching). And we're planning to use these keywords as a our taxonomy for our post tags. That way the keyword appears in each stunt page AND there is a page for each type of publicity stunt. As a general policy, what would be the best way to write our tags?
Keyword Research | | davhad
1. 'crazy', 'famous', 'bad'.
2. 'crazy publicity stunt', 'famous publicity stunt', 'bad publicity stunt'
3. 'crazy publicity stunt', 'famous pr campaign', 'bad marketing stunt' Thanks for sharing your expertise.0 -
Acne related keywords in Google.fr
Hello everyone, I am setting up a website with domainname.fr to rank in google.fr with Acne related keywords. Can anyone give me Competitive keywords which can bring more than 10K visitors per month?? Help will be very much appreciated. P.S: Actually, my uncle is having an offline acne product shop in France. He asked me to setup a website in Google.fr so that he can make some money.
Keyword Research | | artemmin0 -
Google Keyword Tool - Competition - How does it compare to SEOMoz Keyword Difficulty?
Hi, Many times, when I look up a keyword in google using their Keyword Tool, the competition might be low or medium, but, it doesn't seem close to the keyword difficulty on SEOMoz. For example, I looked up fantasy sports. It's low competition on Google. I thought, wow, that's amazing. How can that be when it's so popular? Huge search volume, low competition. Then, SEOMoz says 76% difficulty. It sort of shatters my enthusiasm all of a sudden. Maybe I have to change the order of how I look at it 🙂 What is the difference that's going on? What would be considered low keyword difficulty on SEOMoz? How about medium and high? I know someone might argue that for some guru, what's hard for one person isn't hard for the guru, but, for the average webmaster who does some seo, uses SEOMoz, and some other SEO tools, is there some general breakdown? Thanks.
Keyword Research | | webtarget0 -
Ranking Changes: Google.co.uk vs Google.com vs Google.com.au?
Why would my website appear, for example, second for a keyword search on Google.co.uk but on a search through Google.com or Google.com.au (Australia) not appear in the Top 50? Excuse the simplicity of the question!
Keyword Research | | Benj250 -
Is there a better keyword tool than google's adwords keyword tool?
I have heard a lot of people say not to trust the results of google adword's keyword tool. Is there a better tool out there that i am not aware of that can judge local monthly and global monthly search volume?
Keyword Research | | adriandg1
