Google Not Indexing Description or correct title (very technical)
-
Hey guys,
I am managing the site: http://www.theattractionforums.com/
If you search the keyword "PUA Forums", it will be in the top 10 results, however the title of the forum will be "PUA Forums" rather than using the code in the title tag, and no description will display at all (despite there being one in the code).
Any page other than the home-page that ranks shows the correct title and description.
We're completely baffled! Here are some interesting bits and pieces:
-
It shows up fine on Bing
-
If I go into GWT and Fetch as Google Bot, it shows up as "Unreachable" when I try to pull the home-page.
-
We previously found that it was pulling 'index.htm' before 'index.php' - and this was pulling a blank page. I've fixed this in the .htaccess however to make it redirect, however this hasn't solved the problem.
-
I've disallowed it from pulling the description .etc from the Open Directory with the use of meta tags - didn't change anything.
It's vBulletin and is running vBSEO
Any suggestions at all guys?
I'll be forever in anyones debt who can solve this, it's proving to be near impossible to fix.
Here is the .htaccess file, it may be a part of the issue:
RewriteEngine On
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
Redirect /index.html http://www.theattractionforums.com/index.php
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.theattractionforums.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.theattractionforums.com/$1 [L,R=301]RewriteRule ^((urllist|sitemap_).*.(xml|txt)(.gz)?)$ vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1 [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(admincp/|modcp/|cron|vbseo_sitemap/)
RewriteRule ^((archive/)?(..php(/.)?)?)$ vbseo.php [L,QSA]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^(admincp|modcp|clientscript|cpstyles|images)/
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ vbseo.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^forum/(.*)$ http://www.theattractionforums.com/$1 [R=301,L] -
-
Hey guys,
SEOmoz's software done a crawl for me, and we got a crawl error at this page:
http://www.theattractionforums.com/%3Ca%20href=
This translates to:
http://www.theattractionforums.com/<a href=
What do you think is going on? So confused!
-
Hi Guys,
I've fixed up the above, the 'meta name' and the 'title' issues - however this still doesn't seem to explain why Google wouldn't be able t crawl the page.
It also seems strange that Google would choose NO description over one that is provided. While theoretically plausible, I would find it extremely odd.
Thanks guys,
JC
-
I don't know if this is specifically related but I spotted a typo in your homepage's source code while reviewing this. You have this code: <metaname="robots" <span="">content="noodp,noydir" /></metaname="robots">
in your HTML head. There should be a space between meta and name in that tag. I didn't spot anything else that jumped out to me as wrong. I'd fix that tag for sure, and I hope someone else here can help illuminate further.
Best,
-
The reason it is not using your title is you have stuffed it with keywords
PUA Forums | The Attraction Forums | Free Men's Dating Forum | The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women into Bed
its 118 characters long, it should be 65 at most, google will not use such a title
somthing like
Free Men's Dating Forum | PUA Forums
would be better, remember its a title not a short story, just give the poeple an idea, dont try to give them a sales picth
google picks a description that matchs the query, it is hard to predict when it will use your description tag.
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
-
Google Adding Wrong Location to Title Tag on Multi-Branch Business Homepage
We're a business with 5 separate locations across 5 cities in Upstate NY. While doing some visual ad previews in the adwords interface I noticed that Google is altering my title tag and adding the word "Rochester" to the end of it, cutting short my designated title tag. Rochester is the location of our headquarters so not a big deal for 1/5th of our customers. But to my dismay, the same thing is happening when searching from the geo locations of my other branches. So when searching for my business in Buffalo (we have a physical address in Buffalo), the title tag in the results still says our company name and "Rochester". This of course is likely leading to confusion and actively harming our organic CTR in our branch locations. This is happening in all of the remaining 4 branch locations. I'm at a loss, I tried lengthening the title tag but it still gets cut off. The term Rochester appears (as do the other branch locations) in my meta description for the homepage as well as in the text of the page itself. I haven't gone so far as to remove that yet and hopefully don't have to. Does anyone have any ideas? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Doylejg30 -
Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?
I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed. From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else. I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj0 -
Why is wrong domain being indexed?
We have 2 domains: revolve.com and fwrd.com (unrelated to each other, but hosted on the same server). If you do a site search for revolve.com but enter a designer brand that is only carried on FWRD (not on Revolve), the domain "revolve.com" pops up in the SERP, which is redirected to FWRD.com. Ex. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3Awww.revolve.com isabel marant Why is Google indexing the revolve.com pages, which don't actually exist? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Problem with description on Google search results.
A few months ago I changed the description of one of the pages on my site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
And I noticed that Google does not display the entire description of his search results. Description page is: "Get yourself a personalized name necklace, we offer a huge range of silver, gold and gold plated name necklaces." And Google only shows this line: "Get yourself a personalized name necklace, we offer a huge ... " Did someone have an idea why is that? 2EPSLGX.png0 -
Why Google is not showing right title tags of my website inner pages?
Hello Everyone, I have a same problem with my 3 websites that Google is not showing right title tags of inner pages of my websites goldcoast-plumbers.com: http://screencast.com/t/2AEzDcoTkWF accountants-goldcoast.com.au: metalrecyclers-brisbane.com.au One common thing is all these websites is All in one SEO Pack Plugin for SEO Is it a problem? Thanks in advance for your help! Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Asjad0 -
Is it possible to get a list of pages indexed in Google?
Is there a tool that will give me a list of pages on my site that are indexed in Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rise10 -
Ajax Content Indexed
I used the following guide to implement the endless scroll https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started crawlers and correctly reads all URLs the command "site:" show me all indexed Url with #!key=value I want it to be indexed only the first URL, for the other Urls I would be scanned but not indexed like if there were the robots meta tag "noindex, follow" how I can do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wwmind1 -
Export list of urls in google's index?
Is there a way to export an exact list of urls found in Google's index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0