SERP Meta Dependant Upon Search Query (strange Google bug?)
-
Hi,
I have on-page optimised a client's website
Now take a look at the Title Tag & Meta description of the front page. This is the correct updates I have made -
Title: Practice Management and Financial Consultants to the Health Industry
Description: Award winning Health and Life have been providing accounting, tax and practice management services for Medical, Dental, Allied Health businesses.Now, take a look when the business name is Googled. Notice how the Title Tag switches back to the original, yet the Description Tag is Correct.
Now, take a look when the owner's name is Googled. The Title Tag is now correct, but the description is incorrect.
- Ive set the preferred URL to be the www version
- Ive spent ages in the custom CMS trying to find what could be causing this
- The developer says it's a "Google Thing"
Anyone have any ideas?
-
You might want to also consider using the 'NOODP' and 'NOYDIR' meta tags if you have listings on Yahoo Directory and Dmoz.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35264
-
As far as I know there have been no official statement released on this topic from google. But yes google will sometimes change both title and meta description if it "feels" it's more accurate. Why? probably some spam fighting thing. But your guess is almost as good as mine to when it does this. But if you find someone who have some well documented data on the subject do keep me updated
-
The short answer is that yeah, it's a Google thing. Google has been changing titles a lot more lately, and has often tweaked the meta description. Barry has a post on it over at Search Engine Roundtable. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-title-tag-13704.html.
You don't have anything set up wrong in your CMS, it's Google. It's late, so I don't have a longer answer for you, but hopefully this will help keep you from pulling out any more hair while we wait for some more people to chime in.
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
-
Eligible To Rank For Few Queries
I can't figure out why this site (www.liveathomeseniors.com) is eligible for so few search queries on Google Webmaster Tools. I know there is a lot of work to be done, but this is my biggest puzzle right now. What am I not seeing? 379 pages are indexed and yet the site is has only been deemed eligible to rank for 3 queries over the past 3 months. Is it all the repetition in the way the content has been structured? I'd appreciate people's thoughts on this. I can't see the forest for the trees. Donna
Technical SEO | | DonnaDuncan0 -
Do other search engines use meta keywords
Just want to know even those Google states it doesn't use them is there any benefit from using them for the other search engines?
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Weird SERPS
Hello mozerz, I have a question regarding my SERPS that I just can't figure out, maybe one of you had this problem before or has encounter a similar problem. So I have a website on Scotland, and I have a page for each major city so the structure is scotland/city/glasgow or scotland/city/edinburgh or scotland/city/aberdeen. Now every city page is w3 validated, page speed validated, has around 1000 words of text, all with h1, h2, image alt, nice title and nice description, all have grade A on moz campaign, original content, all with canonical links, no ads or spammy links. The title , description, h1, h2 and img alt are the same only replaced Aberdeen with Edinburgh or Glasgow. or so on ... so all pages are identically just replaced the city word. In terms of link building I have done none ! and in terms of promotion I have done none... so theres no scenario where by I have done something more for one city then the other Now my problem is that all cities are doing well in SERPS, only Glasgow has come up till 14 position and then has dropped suddenly to 74, and remained there for 2 weeks now. I know this sounds like a penalty, but it can't be because I haven't done anything, I've tried all the tools possible to analyze the Glasgow page, though that it was a code problem or a broken link or that google-bot doesn't get up to this page to crawl it and classify it, but all is fine. Can anyone suggest anything that I might do. I'm 100% sure that I have no penalty, I've checked even the webmaster tools, open site explorer to see if anyone tried to link to my site with spammy links ( has happened before, I had about 1000 links about viagra from a competitor pointing to my site ) .
Technical SEO | | asmedia0 -
Google ignores Meta name="Robots"
Ciao from 24 degrees C wetherby UK, On this page http://www.perspex.co.uk/products/palopaque-cladding/ this line was added to block indexing: But it has not worked, when you google "Palopaque PVC Wall Cladding" the page appears in the SERPS. I'm going to upload a robots txt file in a second attempt to block indexing but my question is please:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
Why is it being indexed? Grazie,
David0 -
Have my SERP listings been hacked?
When you Google my site the organic search results look normal. The preview site images even display my actual site when you roll over the results. However, when you click a result you are directed to various Spam pages, not my website. How is this possible? This only happens when you click through from search engines. If you type the URL directly in your browser, you are not redirected to a spam site. the site: funeralhomeoptions.com Have any of you seen or experienced this before?
Technical SEO | | emmyjo0 -
Google previews meanings
I have noticed that when I do a site:mysite.com search and all my indexed pages come up, that when I hover over the arrows and bring up the previews some of the pages have things in a red rectangle and some of the pages even have zig zag-like tears/perforations running through them. What do these signify?
Technical SEO | | VictorVC0 -
How to push down outdated images in Google image search
When you do a Google image search for one of my client's products, you see a lot of first-generation hardware (the product is now in its third generation). The client wants to know what they can do to push those images down so that current product images rise to the top. FYI: the client's own image files on their site aren't very well optimized with keywords. My thinking is to have the client optimize their own images and the ones they give to the media with relevant keywords in file names, alt text, etc. Eventually, this should help push down the outdated images is my thinking. Any other suggestions? Thanks so much.
Technical SEO | | jimmartin_zoho.com0 -
Google penalty
Anyone have any success stories on what they did to get out of Google penalty?
Technical SEO | | phatride0