Why is Google appending a different website's brand name to the end of SERP title?
-
I've recently been shown some SERP results where Google is appending a different website's brand name to the end of the SERP title. It's actually rewriting the brand's name to that of the other website. (This is obviously not ideal.) Why would this be?
The other website doesn't even stock the same product, so there shouldn't be any confusion there. But even if it did, many websites stock the same products. Just confusing...
-
That's a tough one. If you want to DM me the url (or email it to me at marie at marie haynes dot com) I'd be happy to take a quick look.
-
Hi Marie. Thanks for your response.
I'm a bit hesitant to share the examples for my client's privacy. I hope you understand. I do not work on these websites' SEO, I was only asked to look into it to see if I can spot anything that could be causing this. I do, however, work for a larger website that owns both the websites, so that's why I've been asked.
The two businesses share the same address. I was thinking that this may be a factor, but neither site has a Google My Business listing or much in the way of offsite citations. No DMOZ listings.
There are no external canonicals in place, and no mention of the others' URL on the respective sites. Double checked
No duplicate content as both sites sell different products with no overlap, so no duplicate product listings or content. The two sites are not even competing in SERPs for any similar keywords.
-
This is an unusual question. Any chance you could share the example with us?
Do the two websites have much duplicate content between them? Google may be applying a canonical if they think it is duplicate content. Any chance that a canonical was inadvertently placed by you? (I know that's probably pretty unlikely.)
Any chance this has something to do with the businesses' DMOZ listing?
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
-
What exactly "monthly searches" from Google Adwords teach us?
I have noticed that monthly searches of our "brand" in last five years is almost same. But I can see our competitors have increased their brand searched for monthly in last few years. They are gaining popularity slowly where we are not. What are the other things we can learn when users searching for our brand are not increasing? Thanks
Branding | | vtmoz2 -
My question is in regards to possible conflict in creating an additional website under a new domain for our company.
Our companies, Vulcan Information Packaging and ATC both live under the domain “www.binders.com”. This is a great thing as far as us dominating in the binder industry. However, in the next 2-3 years and forward, we want to build our presence as a company who offers packaging products such as boxes, marketing kits, and other forms of packaging. Obviously, the “binders.com” brand/domain does not contribute much to this effort and can be confusing to customers visiting the site. Essentially, we want to build an additional branding for our company in the packaging industry. Keeping this in mind, we own the domain “www.vulcaninformationpackaging.com” and we are considering building a new website using this domain which contains the word “packaging”. This new site would only promote and contain packaging related products. This new website will advertise and direct traffic to our company Vulcan Information Packaging, which is the same company “binders.com” directs traffic to. So my question is to determine whether doing this might be a practice that Google and other search engines might frown upon. I tend to think it will be fine because we will be promoting and driving traffic for non-binder products where as, binders.com is heavily in binder related products. thank you, Dominic Zaidan
Branding | | dzaidan0 -
Google Contacting Clients in an Adwords MCC?!
I am curious if this has happened to others and if so if you were able to resolve it. Today a client forwarded an email that went to a client account and we were in no way copied on it. This is a client that spends in the 6 figures with us and I was shocked to read (Any bold or italics I have added): Hi *****, My name is Jimmy Morrow and I am an Account Strategist at Google on our Agency Team. Your account was recently selected for free dedicated support this quarter and I will be your new point of contact at Google for all things AdWords. We can go over a few housekeeping things I noticed, broader strategy, and some betas that would be a good fit. Please let me know when you have time for a 20-30 minute phone call when we can go over the accounts and make a plan for working together this quarter. Thanks and just let me know a time that works best for you! Best, Jimmy To me, they have essentially gone around us and with the "housekeeping" and "beta" comments sought to make us look either incapable and/or uninformed. We are Google Partners, etc. and we have clients in our MCC for Adwords. I have never seen an occasion where Google blatantly tried to steal the client as it appears is happening here. This is a client who heretofore had NEVER used Adwords and they have been in business since before there was a Google or an Internet. We brought them to Adwords about 6 - 8 months ago!!! They are spending 6 figures on Adwords and I am ready to pull them out and spend the money elsewhere. We sent emails from our UK and our Houston office and no response from lil ole Jimmy. Our UK team has tried calling Google and nothing and then Chatting with them and we can get nothing. This is a client who has a lot of faith in our abilities based on many things we have done for them that worked and they are the kind of client that let's us know when issues arise. So, they are not going to switch and that is not the issue. The issue is Google acted as if they wanted to embrace agencies and if that is so, why then try to back door them? I hope to hear from others who are handling PPC with Google. Thanks a ton. Robert
Branding | | RobertFisher1 -
Serps display
Good Morning Everyone, So by now i'm sure you've all heard about the search engines like Google and Bing displaying Emoji's in the Page titles of the SERPS. Does anyone know how to input the emojis into your page title? I have a magento site and have no idea where to find the emoji's and how to place them in the title. Any help/guidance/advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
Branding | | Prime851 -
Path to getting reviews on Google and Yelp
Yelp and Google, what would be the right path customers have to follow in order for their reviews to be posted and more importantly, to stay there?
Branding | | echo10 -
Acquired Premium Domain, question about Brand name change related to SEO
We recently acquired a premium domain name The domain we were operating on before had a lot of SEO done on it, as well as branding campaigns. Now that we have the premium domain, would it be wise to start doing SEO on the premium domain and discontinue old domain promotions if we plan on changing the brand name? to clear up any confusion, we own for example AAAFurnitureStore.com we acquired the premium domain: AAAFurniture.com should we redirect AAAFurnitureStore.com -> AAAFurniture.com or since we already have established presence/brand do opposite and redirect AAAFurniture.com -> AAAFurnitureStore.com and keep the brand name same as "AAA Furniture Store"?
Branding | | lafurniturestore0 -
Google Places, Optimization when in the Suburb of a Metroplex?
A client's business just recently changed addresses. Even though they are physically less than a mile from the previous location, the city has changed. This has resulted in our Google Places results dissappearing (no surprise). What is the best practice for people searching for <product><metroplex-primary-city>to still get our Google Places result, even though we are technically in a suburb of this metroplex?</metroplex-primary-city></product> Already added the primary city name to the description. What else can I do?
Branding | | networkelites0