Google is putting brandname: in title tag
-
Hello, I was wondering why this is happening? In html for example the title tag is something like this:
keyword 1 | keyword 2 | Brand name. Title is 67 characters..
When I search in google, I see the site but it shows brandname: keyword 1 | keyword 2
Is this bad? does this mean that google doesn't like the title tag that is in the html? I tried looking it up on google, but they were outdated and I honestly didn't really see an answer to what it means when this happens.
Does the brandname: affect rankings?? Have any of you dealt with this, or noticed this?
-
Donnleath, I wouldn't worry too much about this. In fact, Google has been rewriting title tags for about 3 or 4 years, now.
Google, for whatever reason, has decided to rewrite your title tag for you if the one you're using better matches the actual search query being used by the searcher. It's quite possible that if your home page, for example, ranks for one search query they will rewrite it but for another search query they won't rewrite it.
Google will use, from time to time, your brand name, company name, and even elements of your site's navigation to rewrite your title tag. I've seen them take internal links from a site's navigation and breadcrumb trail and use those words in the title tag.
In your case, what you need to decide is if the title tags that Google is rewriting are better or 'worse' for your searchers. If they're worse, then you might consider looking at your site's navigation and breadcrumb trail to see if there's something that you can fix on your site to maybe influence Google to rewrite them another way.
If you see that Google is rewriting ALL of those title tags, though, on all pages, then you might want to take a look at your site's title tags and see if they do need to be rewritten, taking what Google is suggesting, into account.
-
Hi there
Google will change your titles based on what they feel is the most suitable for search. Same with meta descriptions and so on.
Here is a great write up from SocialMediaToday on the subject. Optimize titles the best you can and abide by best practices / your important keywords / queries, but know that Google will sometimes take the reigns and change your titles based on what they feel is best. Google loves branding and this is further proof!
Let me know if this helps! Good luck!
P
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
-
Titles and User Intent
Hi all, Just a question re: Titles. Does adding terms like "buy online" to the title for ecommerce websites change the way Google ranks you? For example: Blue Flowers | Flower Palace Buy Blue Flowers Online | Flower Palace Would the second title appear higher for people in the buying phase of the sales funnel, and lower for people in the research phase of the buying funnel? Or will it not matter?
On-Page Optimization | | Onlineorders0 -
Fetch as Google
Are there any pros or cons with using Google fetch and submit? I realise Google will likely find it of its own accord in due course but I have found it may take a couple of weeks if at all. Fetch and submit seems to speed this process up, sometimes anyway.
On-Page Optimization | | seoman100 -
Duplicate Title Tags/Meta Tags for Website with Multiple Locations
I currently have an insurance website that has over 40 offices in Ontario. The site also provides online quoting.
On-Page Optimization | | MainstreamMktg
In some of our programming, we have implemented variables in the URLS that will allow the quotes to go to the specific city offices - the issue I am having is that the quote in itself is the same quote form (same title, same meta) because it's technically one page on the website. We did it this way to avoid having to update 40 forms if a field on the form were to change. Is there any way I can relieve my site of this duplicate title tag/meta tag issue? Any insight would be really appreciated - thanks so much!0 -
Canoncial tag for homepage?
I have a site that gets most of it's traffic from one keyword combination, but I've noticed lately that instead of sending people to the homepage, it's sending people to an internal page. This isn't a problem, except for the fact that all the best link juice and domain authority has been directed at the homepage. There's not a lot of content on the homepage, so is it worth setting up a canonical tag on the homepage for this internal page to ensure that the page authority/link juice helps to boost this page that is already being indexed for the keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | Bigheadigital0 -
How dangerous are duplicate page titles
We ran a SEO crawl and on our report it flag up duplicate pages titles, we investigate further and found that these were page titles from the same product line that had more than one page, e.g 1-50 (products) 51-100 (products) with a next button to move to the following 50 products. These where flagged as duplicate page titles ".../range-1/page-1" and ".../range-1/page-2" These titles are obviously being read as duplicates but because they are the same range we do not know what the best course of action is. We want to know how detrimental these page titles will be to our SEO if at all. If anyone could shed some light on this issue it would be a massive help. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | SimonDixon0 -
Is it damaging to have TOO long a title tag these days? i.e. well over character limit
Is it damaging to have TOO long a title tag these days? i.e. well over character limit. I learned that title tags should be around 70 characters. I am new at this, but have a client that has three times that, with the same three keyword phrases repeating 3-4 times. And then NO h1's or h2's in the text......advice? Rookie here 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | cschwartzel0 -
Tags or Categories: Which is best?
I seem to have duplicate issues on my website due to tags and categories having the same title. If I was to delete one of the two, which would be better to delete? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | IoanSaid0 -
Confirmation regarding canonical and syndication google tags
Hi, We are in the process of improving our CMS upstream to resolve our duplicate content issues. We were hit pretty hard by the Panda update. One of the steps we have taken is implementation of the canonical link tag across all domains in our site. You see, we are a news release service with muliple channels and websites to represent each. The problem is that a client will submit a release and in many cases the news item is relevant to multiple channels I.E. multiple websites under the same IP range. Site Examples:
On-Page Optimization | | jarrett.mackay
www.hotelnewsresource.com www.restaurantnewsresource.com
www.travelindustrywire.com From a user perspective, it makes sense that they should be able to access the article from the site they are browsing without being redirected to the site we feel carries the most relevance. We hope the canconical tag will resolve this issue for us. I have also read about the syndication tag and was looking for feedback or recommendations if we should implement that also, but it may be overkill as the two tags objectives seem to be similar. I guess my first question is if the syndication tag is only used by Google News. Secondly, and a little off topic is that we also offer an API and like many other sites, I have read, our content partners are now doing better in primary and long tail rankings even thought we are the original source. My assumption is that we should modify the API to force using both caconical and syndication tags as well. Lastly, I´m curious if anyone has tested the original source tag and if we should implement that as well. Thanks everyone. Jarrett0