Meta Titles On Site Different From Google Index Page
-
This is very embarrassing but I hope someone can help. The Meta Titles on my site are not being shown correctly on the Google site index. For example, when I got directly to the page the appropriate page title is shown obviously. However when I go view that page on Google, the title in completely different.
Page title: <a class="attribute-value">Web Design, SEO, PPC, Mobile Development In Philadelphia, Bucks| Infinity Digital Agency</a>
Google Shows: Our Services - Infinity Digital Agency
Here is the result page. I am currently running WordPress and Yoast. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.infinitydigitalagency.com%2Fservices%2F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
-
If you look at Google's cache, you will see they have cached the page with the correct (user defined) title.
-
Take my home page title for example. I keep track of all the meta information I have used in the past. My title for the home page starts off with Infinity Digital Agency:. We have never used this meta title. It almost seems like Google is making it own. Same with the /services page. We have never used that meta title. Any ideas?
-
Take my home page title for example. I keep track of all the meta information I have used in the past. My title for the home page starts off with Infinity Digital Agency:. We have never used this meta title. It almost seems like Google is making it own. Same with the /services page. We have never used that meta title. Any ideas?
-
Take my home page title for example. I keep track of all the meta information I have used in the past. My title for the home page starts off with Infinity Digital Agency:. We have never used this meta title. It almost seems like Google is making it own. Same with the /services page. We have never used that meta title. Any ideas?
-
Take my home page title for example. I keep track of all the meta information I have used in the past. My title for the home page starts off with Infinity Digital Agency:. We have never used this meta title. It almost seems like Google is making it own. Same with the /services page. We have never used that meta title. Any ideas?
-
It's obvious that google doesn't has the changes yet if you search for it via site: in google.
Of course you are right about the fact, that maybe the title changes for specific queries, but this will not be the case if you look it up over the site: search!
However the last point you mentioned, that google maybe prefers the old title tag - I never ever experienced something like this in my life
-
This is a common occurrence in search results pages. You'll find that the title for this page will likely vary depending upon the query.
You'll see for example, that Google is using your defined title text in a search result like: https://www.google.com/#q=mobile+development+philadelphia&start=50
Ultimately, Google will display the title the feel is most concise/relevant to the query. They may also use any Dmoz or Yahoo Directory titles that you might have defined, or even generate a title tag based off your backlink profile. If you are using the Yoast plugin, you can also disable Dmoz and Yahoo directory titles (noodp and noydir)
Here is a video from Matt Cutts some time back talking about how/why Google often changes the title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3HX_8BAhB4
I would also venture to guess this might be a recent title change, and while Google has already discovered and cached the page with the new title, it is possible they are still retaining and showing preference to the old title tag.
-
Hey,
when you did these changes? I confirm that your page title is different
Usually it can take some time until google crawls you again and the changes show up in the SERPs. To speed this process up go to GWT (or now Google Search Console) and under the point "crawl" go to "fetch as google". Here you can request manually a re-crawl of the page. Usually it takes then just 24-48 until you see the changes in the index.
P.S.:
Your new page title is too long. To make sure everything shows up keep it at maximum 58 characters.
Cheers
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
-
Duplicate Page Titles
It seems as though we are being flagged for duplicate page titles when really they are slightly different. Is it better to remove the "dart board" or "dart board backboard" from all the product titles? We were doing this for optimal SEO - to rank for the search of "dart board" - but is it really hurting us? for example, our product titles are: Obama dart board backboard, Texas dart board backboard, Oklahoma dart board backboard, etc. Yet they are being flagged as duplicate titles.
On-Page Optimization | | DartsDecor0 -
Is it convinient to use No-Index, Follow to my Paginated Pages?
I have a website http://www.naukrigulf.com and it has a lot of Paginated pages on its SERP and most of paginated pages are getting indexed in Google SERP. Is it beneficial to use No-Index, Follow to keep the link equity to main (first page), although we have already used rel=next and rel=prev. If Answer is "yes" is their any harm by using no-index, follow with rel=next, rel=prev.
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
Is there any decent web browser that still displays the full page title at the top of the page?
I just updated to the latest version of Firefox on my Mac and saw that they now hide most of the page title in the browser tab, like Chrome and Safari. I like to be able to see the full page title at all times (for reasons I'm sure you all understand) and that's pretty much the only reason I stuck with Firefox all these years. Now I'm looking for an alternative – any suggestions?
On-Page Optimization | | matt-145671 -
Regarding Google Title 'Width' and changing Meta Titles w/o Penalty?
A vast majority of pages on my site are now too wide (the character count was fine prior to the March update). I want to go through and update them so they display properly and are not too wide.However, I am concerned, as my understanding was that changing Meta Titles is dangerous and can have a negative effect on your rankings and can cause real issues. Is this an opportunity to change my Titles all-together without any kind of penalty? Or can I only trim the end part? In summary: 1. Can I edit all of my Meta Titles without affecting my rankings? 2. If no, how do I edit them properly to fit within the proper width and not cause any issues? 3. If yes, I can go through and change all my Meta Titles to whatever extent and optimize them to reflect latest best practices? There are changes I wanted to make to all my meta titles but I've been afraid to... due to fear of rankings drops etc Any help with this would be greatly appreciated
On-Page Optimization | | lawfirm0 -
Google showing my content on the serps in a different domain
Hi all, Recently a partner of ours discovered that Google is showing a meta description on the serps for his homepage that is not his but ours. On his site, he sells add-ons for our software, so the name of our software appears many times and as well there are many links pointing to our site. He claims he hasn´t copied this text from us, and I have used some tools to verify this. I don´t understand how Google can get confused and show our text as the meta desctiption on the serps for his homepage. Any idea on why this happened?
On-Page Optimization | | Paessler0 -
Does hosting server location affect my local google page rank
Hi All, This is my first (of many I would say) questions. My clients site is in Ireland but the hosting service is in Canada. So when i use the MozBar it states that the IP is in Canada. Will this affect my page ranking in Dublin, Ireland? The company is a plumbing service so we would only want local Dublin customers. Thanks so much and I hope someone can help me out. cheers, Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
How different does each page tilte need to be?
I've got a site that is all about wood countertops. There are a few ways people can find info on wood tops. (main) wood countertops (main) butcher block butcher block counters wood counters hardwood countertops etc. For the most part I want to rank for the two top key phrases because they pretty much cover all the other basis with google being as smart as it is. So they question is how different should each page title be? Examples: Wood Countertops - Butcher Block Counters | by J. Aaron = index page Wood Counter tops - Butcher Block Counters - About Us | J. Aaron = about us page Cleaning Butcher Block - Wood Countertop Maintenance | J. Aaron = care & maintenance page Would it be OK to use: <title>Wood Countertops - Butcher Block Counters | by J. Aaron</title> as the template for the whole site with the addition of the actual page subject as an additional piece of the sentence, like example 2 or would that be too similar? Also is that a good idea or should I commit to optimizing each page for a different key phrase? If so would you optimize the home page for the most searched for phrase and let the other pages back it up with the other search terms?
On-Page Optimization | | JAARON0 -
Is it necessary to optimize every page of a site
I recently took over the SEO work for a website that has a limited budget. I'd like to use the resources to get as much as I can for a few pages on the site (keyword research, on-page optimization). Are there pitfalls to not optimizing every page on a site? If so, what are they?
On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee340