Can anyone explain these changes to our Titles in the SERPS?
-
Hi there,
We've been doing well in the SERPS over the past few weeks. Our previous meta title was displayed as:
"Hunter Original Tall - Buy Original Tall Online Here"
However, recently we've seen the title in the SERP switch over to:
"Hunter Original Tall - Cloggs.co.uk"
This has occurred on several of our product pages which display a particular style of a certain brand. So for example:
"Ugg Bailey Button - Cloggs.co.uk"
Has anyone else experienced these changes or can explain why this may have happened?
There is not change to the source code and our Titles have proven to have good click through rates in the past. Any ideas mozzers? -
Barry at Search Engine Roundtable has written about Google choosing their own page titles for your site, and I've seen reports of it here as well, so you're certainly not alone. Here's what Barry has written:
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-title-selection-12989.html
-
I'm glad to hear it's happening else where, it doesn't appear to be negatively affecting the SERPs which is a good thing, but I'd really like to know what's causing it.
I've had a look in Webmaster tools and can see no indication there, thought there maybe something in the 'html suggestions' section.
-
Ive been seeing the same thing on and off, so its not just you. But I have no idea why it is happening.
-
Right that's what threw me off as well, and that's why I ruled out the possibility that it was pulling the site titles from the ODP. Here is Google's explanation of how they choose Title/Description snippets. I suppose they could just be pulling it from the content of the website and writing their own, but I've never really encountered that happening without it being related to an external link source. Strange. Hopefully another SEOmozzer can provide better insight.
-
Thanks for the reposne Anthony!
I'll look into it. But would that mean that there is a site somewhere linking to multiple pages on our site with links strong enough to overpower the Title ? it's possible just seems unlikely to be doing across so many different pages.
-
I can't be sure without digging into your site a bit, but Google has been known to use the anchor text of strong links to your website in place of your title tag, on some occasions. This is discussed in this YOUmoz post, Distilled Stole My Page Title.
Could this be the cause?
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
-
Have you ever changed the logo anchor text from "logo" to "keyword"? How Google considers?
Hi all, We know that generally logo with the website homepage link is the first link crawled by Google and other search engines. Can we change the anchor text from "logo" to "keyword"? Have any one tried or seen others doing? How Google considers it? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Domains dominating SERPs w/multiple listings
I know Cutts addressed this as a potential future update to the Google algo but it's driving me bonkers.. My primary targeted keyword has one of our competitors listed 4 times in a row on the top of page 2. Some of the pages have duplicate page titles and the content is relatively thin. The site has a PR of 2 and a DA of 35. Why on earth are they able to suck up a whole half of a results page?!?!?! I don't know that there's anything anyone can tell me that will help, but if there's something I missed about this update please let me know. 'snot fair. 😞
Algorithm Updates | | jesse-landry0 -
New feature on the SERPs - anyone know what this is!?
Hey guys, I've just been doing a bit of searching to give the new Penguin update a good going over and came across the following result on the right side of the page. As you can see, it's a link to the site that's sitting at the top of the SERP. At first, however, I thought it was some snazzy AdWords feature. Although, having clicked into the link "20 hours ago", it seems that Google has pulled the snippet from the diy-kitchens.com's Google+ feed. Anyone seen this before? Is it a new thing? Is it only the top result that's able to get a snippet from Google+? 7hA4g49.png
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Dropped off cliff for a partic keyword & can't find out why
At the beginning of Dec we ranked consistently in the top 3 for the keyword 'Suffolk' for the site www.suffolktouristguide.com (apge rank 4, thousands of quality inboud links, site age 5 years +). Since then we've been falling off a cliff and today aren't even in the top 50 for this search term, but most of our othr search terms are unaffected. Our SEOMoz grade remains A for 'Suffolk' and we haven't changed anything in that time that could have had such a material effect (knowingly at least). A similar issue happened to my other site www.suffolkhotelsguide.com back in April and it hasn't recovered despite grade A's on the homepage and key pages. We've checked internal broken links, page download times, external links (used the disavow tool and reconsideration request and got back 'We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google'); etc etc Any thoughts on what I can try next? All suggestions appreciated as I am completely stuck (& have spent a fortune on 'SEO experts' to no effect).
Algorithm Updates | | SarahinSuffolk0 -
I need help with drastic SERP difference between Bing and Google
One of our sites that has been around for a couple of years has about 60,000 pages showing on google, however, bing only shows 90 pages for the site. This same phenomenon has been happening across the board for our sites. Any ideas to improve our indexing results for bing?
Algorithm Updates | | atuomala0 -
HTML5: What changes in tag optimization?
Can anyone shad som light on on page optimization for HTML5? Does google already taking the new section tag in consideration? How about heading? I read somewhere that now Google can digest multiple H1 heading. Is that true and is that recomended? Thanks a lot
Algorithm Updates | | dadaseo0 -
SEO updates and rank changes
We have been updating page titles and meta descriptions for a client (not changing ANY links and the content we are replacing is "fluff," no major keywords or any relevant information) yet in the past few weeks, rankings have plummeted. I used the SEOMoz grader to check and make sure we have the keywords in there, in the right places for the updated page source info, and we're getting A's yet for those same keywords, the website is nowhere to be found. For example for the phrase "organic t shirts," we get an A for this page: http://greenpromotionalitems.com/organic-t-shirts.htm but when searching organic t shirts, no Green Promotional Items... Ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | laidlawseo0 -
Changes in Sitemap Indexation in GWT?
I've noticed some significant changes in the number and percentage of indexed URLs for the sitemaps we've been submitting to Google. I've been tracking these numbers directly from Google Webmaster Tools>Site Configuration>Sitemaps. We've made some changes that could be causing the changes we're seeing, but I want to confirm that this wasn't just a change in the way Google reports the indexation. Has anyone else noticed major changes, greater than a 30% change, in the indexation of your sitemaps in the past week? Thanks, Joe
Algorithm Updates | | JoeAmadon0