Why Google won’t display the right page title?
-
I'm using a WordPress site with the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.
Why Google won’t display the right page title for my CATEGORY pages?
This is s example category page I'm having a problem with: http://bit.ly/1DReQPP
In the source code of this category page you can see the title is:
<title>Yoga Übungen - Mit visuellen Guides, Videos & viel Inspiration</title>Now when I check the title in the SERPS it only gives me the the category name 'Yoga Übungen'. See screenshot here: http://awesomescreenshot.com/05942buz60
This happens with ALL the category pages on my site. Google uses the category name instead of the title provided in the source code.I found an article from Yoast dealing with this issue: https://yoast.com/google-page-title/ It's correct, that Google sometimes chooses a different page title, but this article doesn't address the exclusive category problem.
For 'normal' pages or posts, Google always shows the title which I've setup in Yoast (and which is in the source code). I don't understand what goes wrong for category pages? Do any of you have a similar problem or experience with that?
-
OK there is no general issue,just search for "visueller yoga guide" so i guess google is changing the title that it fits better, search for a term in the title and its the right one.
www.google.de/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=visueller yoga guide
^^ es gibt keinen generellen Fehler, vermutlich überschreibt Google den Title, dass es besser passt, suche einfach mal nach "visuellem Yoga guide"
-
interessant, warum lässt du eigentlich "category" - yoast kann das doch rausschmeissen. Wann hattest du den Titel geändert? BTW hast du 2 mal Yoga Übungen als Title, einmal als Produkt.Ich habe das Problem nicht, Wordpress und Yoast nutze ich auch. Vorsicht, wenn du sie rausnimmst, das /blog/ drin stehen bleibt und der Artikel nicht deine Produkte überschreibt. Ich forsche mal ein bisschen und melde mich.
thats interesting, why do you let the "category" in your urls when yoast can take them out? when did you changed your title tag? by the way, you hav got 2 times "Yoga Übungen" in your titles, one is a product. I never had that problem, and I use Wordpress and Yoast like you do. Be carefull if you want to take the category out, it could override youre product pages. I search a bit for the probebly reason and answer again.
Sorry MOZ I think we can understand each other better in german
-
The source code is fine. Exactly how I set it up in the Yoast SEO plugin.
My thought was that there is some other thing in the theme code (for categories) that makes Google skipping the title from the source code.
Otherwise how can Google accept 100% of pages and post titles/description, while ignoring them for all the categories?
I honestly don't know where the problem is. Even worse, I don't know how to go about this issue
-
What makes you think it might be a theme issue? Both the Moz toolbar and the Screaming Frog tool show the title as "Yoga Übungen - Mit visuellen Guides, Videos & viel Inspiration," so I would be very surprised if Google was reading a different title from the page.
-
Thank you for your reply. Generally I would agree with your statement. This is also d'accord with the explanation of Yoast.
But is it really likely, that Google accepts the title and description for all my pages and blog posts.? And not accepts from all category pages?
I see a pattern here and I don't believe this is the root of the issue.
So far I could only imagine, that it's an issue of the theme and source code problem.
-
Matt Cutts did a video about what criteria they use to change page titles back in March, and Jennifer Slegg posted a breakdown at http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2342232/why-google-changes-your-titles-in-search-results.
Cutts mentioned 3 criteria that they use. If your existing title doesn't meet that criteria, they may change it.
1. Concise (short enough title)
2. Good description of page and site that the page is on
3. Relevant to your query
Apparently, Google finds it more relevant to put the Category name + the name of your site.
-
It's still the same problem I've had it with one of our category pages before as well. What could be the problem is that you're linking to the page with the anchor text which is currently the title. If you do that to much they sometimes use the anchor text as the new title if they think it would work better.
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 to index your website pages on Google 2020 ?
Hey! Hopefully, everyone is fine here I tell you some step how you are index your all website pages on Google 2020. I'm already implementing these same steps for my site Boxes Maker. Now Below I'm giving you some steps for indexing your website pages. These are the most important ways to help Google find your pages: Add a sitemap. ... Make sure people know your site. ... Ensure full navigation on your site. ... Apply the indexing application to your homepage. ... Sites that use URL parameters other than URLs or page names may be more difficult to broadcast.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fbowable0 -
Removing indexed internal search pages from Google when it's driving lots of traffic?
Hi I'm working on an E-Commerce site and the internal Search results page is our 3rd most popular landing page. I've also seen Google has often used this page as a "Google-selected canonical" on Search Console on a few pages, and it has thousands of these Search pages indexed. Hoping you can help with the below: To remove these results, is it as simple as adding "noindex/follow" to Search pages? Should I do it incrementally? There are parameters (brand, colour, size, etc.) in the indexed results and maybe I should block each one of them over time. Will there be an initial negative impact on results I should warn others about? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Frankie-BTDublin0 -
What are best page titles for sub-folders or sub-directories? Same as website?
Hi all, We always mention "brand & keyword" in every page title along with topic in the website, like "Topic | vertigo tiles". Let's say there is a sub-directory with hundreds of pages...what will be the best page title practice in mentioning "brand & keyword" across all pages of sub-directory to benefit in-terms if SEO? Can we add "vertigo tiles" to all pages of sub-directory? Or we must not give same phrase? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Homepage not showing up in Google even when searching exact title tag
why does my site not show up in Google even when you search exact homepage title tag or business name (Brand-It Web Design)? You can even search the exact title tag for my site and it does not show up. If you search site:branditwebdesign.com you will see that it is there. But just the homepage doesn't show up in search for anything else. We have probably tried everything in the world to get this working. Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brand_It_Web_Design0 -
Google isn't seeing the content but it is still indexing the webpage
When I fetch my website page using GWT this is what I receive. HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jacobfy
X-Pantheon-Styx-Hostname: styx1560bba9.chios.panth.io
server: nginx
content-type: text/html
location: https://www.inscopix.com/
x-pantheon-endpoint: 4ac0249e-9a7a-4fd6-81fc-a7170812c4d6
Cache-Control: public, max-age=86400
Content-Length: 0
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 16:29:38 GMT
X-Varnish: 2640682369 2640432361
Age: 326
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: keep-alive What I used to get is this: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:00:24 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.23 (Amazon)
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.18
Expires: Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT
Last-Modified: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:00:24 +0000
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
ETag: "1365696024"
Content-Language: en
Link: ; rel="canonical",; rel="shortlink"
X-Generator: Drupal 7 (http://drupal.org)
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"
xmlns:og="http://ogp.me/ns#"
xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
xmlns:sioc="http://rdfs.org/sioc/ns#"
xmlns:sioct="http://rdfs.org/sioc/types#"
xmlns:skos="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#"> <title>Inscopix | In vivo rodent brain imaging</title>0 -
Why Is Google Indexing These Product Pages On Shopify?
How can we communicate to Google the exact product pages we'd like indexed on our site? We're an apparel company that uses Shopify as our ecommerce platform. Website is sportiqe.com. Currently, Google is indexing all types of different pages on our site. **Example of a product page we want indexed: ** Product Page: sportiqe.com/products/PRODUCT-TITLE (Like This) **Examples of product pages being indexed: ** sportiqe.myshopify.com/products/PRODUCT-TITLE sportiqe.com/collections/COLLECTION-NAME/products/PRODUCT-TITLE See attached for an example of how two different "Boston Celtics Grateful Dead" shirts are being indexed. Any suggestions? We've used both Shopify and Google Webmaster tools to set our preferred domain (sportiqe.com). We've also added this snippet of code to our site three months ago thinking that would do the trick... {% if template == 'product' %}{% if collection %} {% endif %}{% endif %} sKwNZOl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | farmiloe0 -
Duplicate Page Title problems with Product Catalogues (Categories, Subcategories etc.)
Hey guys, I've done a fair bit of Googling and "mozzing" and can't seem to find a definitive solution. In our product catalogue on our site we have multiple ways to access the product for navigation purposes, and SeoMoz is throwing up hundreds of duplicate page title errors which are basically just different ways to get to the same product yet it sees it as a "separate page" and thus duplicating itself. Is this just SeoMoz confusing itself or does Google actually see it this way too? For example, a product might be: www.example.com/region/category/subcategory/ www.example.com/region2/category/subcategory/ www.example.com/region/category/subcategory2/ etc. Is the only solution to have the product ONLY listed in one combination? This kind of kills our ability to have easy refinement for customers browsing the catalogue, i.e: something that falls under the "Gifts for Men" might also be a match for "Father's Day Gifts" or "Gifts for Dad" etc. Any solution or advice is greatly appreciated, cheers 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ExperienceOz0 -
How do I fix the error duplicate page content and duplicate page title?
On my site www.millsheating.co.uk I have the error message as per the question title. The conflict is coming from these two pages which are effectively the same page: www.millsheating.co.uk www.millsheating.co.uk/index I have added a htaccess file to the root folder as I thought (hoped) it would fix the problem but I doesn't appear to have done so. this is the content of the htaccess file: Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^millsheating.co.uk RewriteRule (.*) http://www.millsheating.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.millsheating.co.uk/ [R=301,L] AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JasonHegarty0