Page Title shown in SERPS not the same as

[Marketing_Today]

Hi all,

I'm trying to get a homepage to rank for a certain term, but the page keeps showing up in the SERPS with the "Brand Name: Keyword" when I have written it as "Keyword - Brand Name" in the  <title>tag. I can't even see "Brand Name" Keyword" in the code of the page so I don't know where Google is pulling this from? </p> <p>I have <meta name="robots" content="noodp,noydir"/> on the page.</p> <p>I'm running Yoast and have removed the Brand from the Site Name and the Page Title for the homepage is "Keyword - Brand Name" in WordPress. I've changed the meta description so I can see the page has been crawled and re-indexed as the new meta description is showing in the SERPs</p> <p>Any idea, where Google is pulling this Page Title from and how I can get it changed to read the actual <title> tag? Or is there something I need to change in WordPress?</p> <p>Thank you!</p></title>

[BrianJGomez]

Google will do this as they see fit in an effort to connect users with the content they are looking for. They will even serve multiple page titles for the same page based on the user search. The factors that determine that are anchor text to the URL and click through rates for specific kws. Essentially Google will treat your SERPs like their own personal Adwords ad, where they will tinker with the ad copy to achieve their desired result.

[hellemans]

I would suggest doing a 'fetch as Google' of the current page and then submit to index...

[Tymen]

Hello,

I had the same issue with a site I manage also in Wordpress with Yoast. I found that in Settings> Page Title and Subtitle overruled my Yoast Page Title and Description. Once I changed it there it was fixed. You may have the same problem. Hope this helps!

[ClaytonJ]

The most common cause of the issue is if the Title is in excess of 512 pixels. Have you checked the length of the Title on a snippet tool https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag or http://tinyurl.com/nyt6vvt

In the event the Title is in excess of 512 pixels google often places the brand name first and then the balance of the Title or pulls something all together. Which is what you are describing.

The issue is usually solvable, it may take a bit of tweaking.  On your brand name google pulls it from my experience from the url.

Let me know about Title length first.

Hope that assists.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Has the page already been indexed/cached again since you've made changes on the page? Also could it be that Google is rewriting titles for other search terms as well on these kind of pages?

[O2C]

I read an article about this a while back.

I think the conclusion was that it depends on what you are searching for as Google may change the title to fit the users search term better.

If you do a site:yoursite.co.uk search on Google it will bring up the indexed pages and should show the correct title.

Are you having the same issue in other search engines? Or just Google?