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.
Why Doesn't Google Use My Title Tag and Meta Description?
-
Hi fellow Moz SEOs,
Need your URGENT help! We set an optimised title & meta description for our client websites. These titles are approved by our clients. Before somedays, they checked on Google, noticed the title & meta description were not the same.
Next moment, they notified me about this issue. The title & meta description looks fine when I checked the source code. So, why Google use title & meta description differently?
For example:
Title approved by client: Top Specialist Divorce & Family Lawyer - Yeo & Associates LLC
Google set our title: Yeo & Associates LLC: Top Specialist Divorce & Family LawyerTitle approved by client: Filing For Divorce Online in Singapore | DivorceBureau
Google set our title: DivorceBureau: Filing For Divorce Online in SingaporeTitle approved by client: Halal Buffet & Bento/Packet Meals Event Caterer Singapore | Foodtalks
Google set our title: Foodtalks - Halal Buffet & Bento/Packet Meals Event Caterer SingaporeTitle approved by client: Child Care Centre in Singapore| Top Preschool | Carpe Diem
Google set our title: Carpe Diem: Child care Centre in Singapore| Top PreschoolEvery day, they are requesting me to update Google's title with their approved title. Also, asking me these questions.
Why did this happen?
Why didn't set their recommended title?Is there any way to set our approved titles? Please, help me to find the solution. ASAP
Thanks in advance!
-
Hi Jack,
Thank you so much for the detailed explanation. Yes, I'm aware of the "Clear Cached URL" option. But it's not changed anything. It's already more than 48hrs still results are same.
Regards,
Verz -
Hi Verv,
sorry this is happening to you. as Zack mentioned, if Google is simply showing an old title, then the pages or titles in google search console may be cached.
If these are brand new titles, then it's likely that Google either feels their title is more relevant or they think your title may be too long or 'spammy' for the industry you're marketing, like 'Top Specialty Divorce Lawyer in Singapore'. This is not uncommon actually. here's a good post on what else might be happening: https://www.authoritylabs.com/title-tags/
Your ranking for that actually looks pretty good from my end, so you may want to hesitate before just switching out a new title.
-
Hi there,
In Google Search Console, are you aware that there is a "Clear Cached URL" option in Removals, that allows one to "Keep URL(s) in Google Search results, just clear current snippet and cached version until the next crawl."? Here is more information, just in case it's helpful:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9689846#clear_cache_request (You may already be aware of this)
While I don't know for sure, I would merit a guess that a previous title and meta description are displaying on these pages, and Google needs to know to refresh them. (Even if that guess is not correct, this may resolve the issue, actually.)
Does this help at all?
Best,
Zack
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
-
Traffic drop after hreflang tags added
We operate one company with two websites each serving a different location, one targeting EU customers and the other targeting US customers. thespacecollective.com (EU customers) thespacecollective.com/us/ (US customers) We have always had canonical tags in place, but we added the following hreflang tags two weeks ago (apparently this is best practice); EU site (thespacecollective.com) US site (thespacecollective.com/us/) Literally the same day we added the above hreflang tags our traffic dropped off a cliff (we have lost around 70-80% on the EU site, and after a minor recovery, 50% on the US site). Now, my first instinct is to remove the tags entirely and go back to just using canonical, but if this is truly best practice, that could do more damage than good. This is the only change that has been made in recent weeks regarding SEO. Is there something obvious that I am missing because it looks correct to me?
International SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Changing the language of the website meta title and description?
Hello, Moz community! I'm planning to change the language of my website title and description from English to rank better for queries on the local language. Do you think this would increase the local language ranking? And in case I need to switch back to English, let's say in 2021, would it be difficult to regain the current rankings? Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this. Thank you!
International SEO | | vhubert2 -
Where is it appropriate to use a .eu domain?
My client, a UK company, has a .eu domain and want to rank primarily in the UK but also worldwide, is a .eu domain appropriate?
International SEO | | peeveezee0 -
Country subfolders showing as sitelinks in Google, country targeting for home page no longer working
Hi There, Just wondering if you can help. Our site has 3 region versions (General .com, /ie/ for Ireland and /gb/ for UK), each submitted to Google Webmaster Tools as seperate sites with hreflang tags in the head section of all pages. Google was showing the correct results for a few weeks, but I resubmitted the home pages with slight text changes last week and something strange happened, though it may have been coincidental timing. When we search for the brand name in google.ie or google.co.uk, the .com now shows as the main site, where the sitelinks still show the correct country versions. However, the country subdirectories are now appearing as sitelinks, which is likely causing the problem. I have demoted these on GWT, but unsure as to whether that will work and it seems to take a while for sitelink demotion to work. Has anyone had anything similar happen? I thought perhaps it was a markup issue breaking the head section so that Google can no longer see the hreflangs pointing to each other as alternates. I checked the source code in w3 validator and it doesn't show any errors. Anyway, any help would be much appreciated - and thanks to anyone who gets back, it's a tricky type of issue to troubleshoot. Thanks, Ro
International SEO | | romh0 -
If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang
We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be. A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from. Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man. If there are any other options, please let me know.
International SEO | | Ben.JD0 -
Multiple hreflang tags
I'm trying to advise on the multi country seo for a site in terms of markup. We've already decided on using sub folders rather than separate sites or subdomains due to an established link profile and good rankings in all countries. The question is in relation to the homepage. Obviously this is the page most likely to rank well in any country (the site is a .com). But can multiple hreflang tags be put on the page to say that the page targets many countries? Or would leaving the hreflang tag off allow it to just rank for all countries? Also do Yahoo and Bing follow hreflang tags? I can't find any info on this anywhere! Thanks very much in advance for any help!
International SEO | | Bdig0 -
Geographic Target set up in Google webmaster tool
Hi, When i launched my web site 3 months ago ( I'm am very new to SEO) I have set up the geographical target section in Google webmaster tool for US. Now, I'm thinking to change it to some other geo target to see if i can get more traffic. However, recently few of my prompted keywords got really well in Google US ranking. Here are my Questions: if i will change the geo settings in webmaster tool will effect the ranking i already managed to achieve in US? In the list of all the countries in Google webmaster tools what does is mean "unlisted"? Can i select more than one country to target and if I can how? Thanks!! Raviv
International SEO | | Indiatravelz0 -
Non US site pages indexed in US Google search
Hi, We are having a global site wide issue with non US site pages being indexed by Google and served up in US search results. Conversley, we have US en pages showing in the Japan Google search results. We currently us IP detect to direct users to the correct regional site but it isn't effective if the users are entering through an incorrect regional page. At the top of each or our pages we have a drop down menu to allow users to manually select their preferred region. Is it possible that Google Bot is crawling these links and indexing these other regional pages as US and not detecting it due to our URL structure? Below are examples of two of our URLs for reference - one from Canada, the other from the US /ca/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog50008/ /us/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog20038/ If that is, in fact, what is happening, would setting the links within the drop down to 'no follow' address the problem? Thank you. Angie
International SEO | | Corel0