Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Page Title shown in SERPS not the same as
-
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>
-
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.
-
I would suggest doing a 'fetch as Google' of the current page and then submit to index...
-
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!
-
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.rainyclouds.online/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.
-
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?
-
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?
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 are best page titles for sub-folders or sub-directories? Same as website?
Hi all, We always mention "brand & keyword" in every page title along with topic in the website, like "Topic | vertigo tiles". Let's say there is a sub-directory with hundreds of pages...what will be the best page title practice in mentioning "brand & keyword" across all pages of sub-directory to benefit in-terms if SEO? Can we add "vertigo tiles" to all pages of sub-directory? Or we must not give same phrase? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Should my back links go to home page or internal pages
Right now we rank on page 2 for many KWs, so should i now focus my attention on getting links to my home page to build domain authority or continue to direct links to the internal pages for specific KWs? I am about to write some articles for several good ranking sites and want to know whether to link my company name (same as domain name) or KW to the home page or use individual KWs to the internal pages - I am only allowed one link per article to my site. Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
Javascript to fetch page title for every webpage, is it good?
We have a zend framework that is complex to program if you ask me, and since we have 20k+ pages that we need to get proper titles to and meta descriptions, i need to ask if we use Javascript to handle page titles (basically the previously programming team had NOT set page titles at all) and i need to get proper page titles from a h1 tag within the page. current course of action which we can easily implement is fetch page title from that h1 tag being used throughout all pages with the help of javascript, But this does makes it difficult for engines to actually read what's the page title? since its being fetched with javascript code that we have put in, though i had doubts, is anyone one of you have simiilar situation before? if yes i need some help! Update: I tried the JavaScript way and here is what it looks like http://islamicencyclopedia.org/public/index/hadith/id/1/book_id/106 i know the fact that google won't read JavaScript like the way we have done with the website, But i need help on "How we can work around this issue" Knowing we don't have other options.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SmartStartMediacom0 -
Can too many "noindex" pages compared to "index" pages be a problem?
Hello, I have a question for you: our website virtualsheetmusic.com includes thousands of product pages, and due to Panda penalties in the past, we have no-indexed most of the product pages hoping in a sort of recovery (not yet seen though!). So, currently we have about 4,000 "index" page compared to about 80,000 "noindex" pages. Now, we plan to add additional 100,000 new product pages from a new publisher to offer our customers more music choice, and these new pages will still be marked as "noindex, follow". At the end of the integration process, we will end up having something like 180,000 "noindex, follow" pages compared to about 4,000 "index, follow" pages. Here is my question: can this huge discrepancy between 180,000 "noindex" pages and 4,000 "index" pages be a problem? Can this kind of scenario have or cause any negative effect on our current natural SEs profile? or is this something that doesn't actually matter? Any thoughts on this issue are very welcome. Thank you! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Does an H1 have to be at the top of a page?
Because H1 "may" carry some weight with Google does it have to be placed at the top of the page? Can I place it towards the bottom of the page instead in normal body size? My goal is to keep the main keywords in the H1 but create a much friendlier title for the customer to read at the top of the page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty0 -
Does rel=canonical fix duplicate page titles?
I implemented rel=canonical on our pages which helped a lot, but my latest Moz crawl is still showing lots of duplicate page titles (2,000+). There are other ways to get to this page (depending on what feature you clicked, it will have a different URL) but will have the same page title. Does having rel=canonical in place fix the duplicate page title problem, or do I need to change something else? I was under the impression that the canonical tag would address this by telling the crawler which URL was the URL and the crawler would only use that one for the page title.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | askotzko0 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0 -
Sitemap in SERPS
What's up guys, Having some troubles with SERP rankings. My sitemap (navigation) is appearing instead of my actual keywords. I have tried a few methods to fix this; setting a preferred domain, using a 301 redirects, deleting out of date pages via Google webmaster tools. Nothing seems to work. My next step was to refresh the cache for my entire site - does anyone know how to do this? Can't see any tools... Any help would be great. Cheers, Jon.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamesjk240
