Title Tag issue
-
Hello,
This is a weird one. I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction.
A couple months ago, we updated trinitypower.com and it was back then that I first noticed this issue, but because the home page title tag was okay and contained the primary terms for that page, I told myself I would circle back.
The problem is that even though Google crawls the site everyday, it does not update the title tag text in it's index.
-
Google: "Trinity Power Rentals" and you will see the title in the index as "Trinity Power: Temporary Power Rentals".
-
Go to trinitypower.com and view source. You will see the title tag in the code as "Temporary Power Rentals - Trinity Power"
The desc tag has been updated correctly, but I can't figure out why not the Title tag. You can look at the cache version in the index of Google. It is showing the latest version of that tag, so I really do not understand what has happened here.
I am using WP Super Cache... maybe a conflict with that? I have dumped it's cache numerous times though.
Please let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Jarrett
-
-
Np!
-
Great, thanks for feedback guys, much appreciated. I was not really that concerned as the Title Google has chosen to use, works. Nice to know that it is not an issue with the code or a plugin conflict.
Thanks again,
J
-
Hi Jarrett,
Max and Robert are both correct. Google sometimes displays different titles based on what they believe is the user's intent. In your case specifically, I think Google is displaying a title tag that makes sense.
Think about it, if someone is using a query that includes your **brand name **they are likely trying to find your website as quickly as possible. By pushing your brand name to the beginning of the title tag it may be easier for the user to recognize that the 1st result is in fact your website.
You can always try different variations of your title tag to see if Google will change it (for example, "Temporary Power Rentals | Trinity Power" or "Temporary Power Rentals by Trinity Power") but in my opinion, because it is a branded search term, Google will probably display your brand name first no matter what.
I personally wouldn't be overly concerned about this specific occurrence.
Hope this clears things up a bit!
-
Hi, rest assured. It has nothing to do with your site or your site's cache. I have seen this happen on my sites as well.
Search Engine Land wrote about this at http://searchengineland.com/advanced-seo-learning-experiments-using-googles-title-tag-changes-example-189850 they link to a Google Support page that states the following:
_If we’ve detected that a particular result has [...] issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources. However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. _
There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query. Once we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site. Users are scanning for their query terms or other signs of relevance in the results, and a title that is tailored for the query can increase the chances that they will click through.
There's also this video from Google Webmaster Tools YouTube channel where Matt Cutts goes over the "Why would Google do that?" question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3HX_8BAhB4
-
Check my comments here: http://moz.com/community/q/has-google-changed-how-it-displays-metatitles-for-business-listings
Analyze your homepage with your preferred keyword density analyzer, and you will find out the top 2 words keyword is "temporary power" and your top 3 words keyword is "temporary power rentals".
Now guess what google think is the most appropriate title in SERP?
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 is the best tag to use for your Logo ?
Hi, I'm wondering what is the best tag to use on your logo. We're currently using h1 and i want to scrap that ASAP.
On-Page Optimization | | Alex.harvey.Cortex0 -
Noindex, nofollow tags
Hi, I have changed my tags to noindex,nofollow with Yoast. But still, seomoz software showing me warnings and errors for those pages. Also did the same for archive pages example.com/page-2/ and facing the same problems. I need to clear as much errors as I can in the software so I can see the real remaining errors in the website. Help will be highly appreciated. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Xasir0 -
Hey guys! I was looking at adding the H1 tag lower on the page than the H2 tag because I want the top bit to be a call to action. Is this proper practice?
Hey guys! I was looking at adding the H1 tag lower on the page than the H2 tag because I want the top bit to be a call to action. Is this proper practice?
On-Page Optimization | | Web3Marketing870 -
Why does Google show old title?
I made some changes to title tags on a clients site over a month ago. Google has since crawled all the pages that the changes were made to. Here's the problem. For some of the pages, the old title is still showing in search results. Why does Google do this? 2) What can I do about it?
On-Page Optimization | | eli.boda0 -
Page Title
Hi All, I am wondering if you could help me please. I am getting the following result after I run my On-Page Analysis Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements _Easy fix _ <dl style="font-style: normal;"> <dt>Page titles</dt> <dd>"Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin -" and "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove all but a single page title element.</dd> </dl> Does this mean that i have 2 pages that are nearly identical or i should only name a page with one word? The reason i ask is because i have 1 page called "Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin" and another called "Aquashowers-Dublin Shower Repair" I don't have a page called "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin" (with the space inbetween the words and the hyphen) Any help would be great. Thanks again Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Change 10yrs old home title tag seo safe?
Howdy everyone! Wish you the best for 2012! We have a client who is ranked #1 for keyword "blue widgets". Their site's homepage title has the keyword "blue widgets" in it and has been the same for 10yrs+. Recently they have added other types of widgets to their offering. Is it safe to change their title by adding more keywords to it? For example: "blue widgets | green widgets | brand x widgets". May our client lose their ranking if we change their title? Thanks in advance for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | gerardoH0 -
Ranking Issues Recently Popping Up
We have a site that based on your research tools, holds its own in almost all aspects in regards to # of links, # of different linking domains, quality of links, mozrank, moztrust and all that stuff. Compared to our top competitors, we do very well based on your tools via our campaign monitor. The issue is we seem to be dropping like crazy every month in our rankings and traffic despite this fact, and we can't get our head around the cause. I do have a couple of ideas, and I wanted to run them by you guys to get your opinion. Domain: bonitaj.com My Thoughts On Possible Issues... 1. Text Content & Panda Update I know one of the big things with the panda update was quality of content. I know one thing we have for sure is a lack of "text-based" content. Sure, we have home page, main cats, sub-cats and product pages, but they are mostly just windows into the product pages, and don't have a whole lot of good copy. THIS IS MOST EVIDENT ON OUR PRODUCT PAGES, where each product page is loaded with content, but only 3-4 very short paragraphs of text. Do you think this is hurting us? THE ONLY ISSUE IS THAT our competitors also don't have a whole lot of text-based content on their pages. 2. Too Many Category Pages & Same Products Featured Somewhat on them I think another problem may be that on each category page, we do have a lot of the same products featured. I don't think its crazy duplicate content or anything, but I do think that back in the old days we got a little crazy with creating "niched out" category pages that pretty much feature the same products as some of the more important and base category pages. Do you think this is hurting us? I've pitched a solution to this that involves trying to tone down the amount of sub-cats we feature that were originally geared towards attracting long-tail traffic. In the end that really isn't working anymore anyway, so maybe we're spreading our site thin by going to deep with some of these niche category pages? 3. Lack of a sitemap? We used to use an xml sitemap, and really don't anymore. We have nothing on file with google webmaster tools. I've recently read in one of your blog posts that a simple thing like adding a good sitemap could help our 600+ page site or so get crawled a bit deeper allowing more pages to rank? IN THE END, MY QUESTION IS SIMPLY, IF THERE IS ONE OR TWO THINGS I CAN DO TO GET OVER THIS HUMP, WHAT WOULD YOU SUGGEST?
On-Page Optimization | | AarcMediaGroup0 -
Canonical tag for home page
This question was asked before but I didn't see a clear answer to it. If I've got a site that has as it's home page: http://www.mysite.com/, and there are many references within the site back to the home page that point to /index.php, should I include a canonical tag in the index.php page like this: to avoid a duplicate content issue, and to have all juice from both links combined into one?
On-Page Optimization | | wcksmith0