Google automatically adding company name to serp titles
-
Maybe I've been living under a rock, but I was surprised to see that Google had algorithmically modified my page titles in the search results by adding the company name to the end of the (short) title.
<title>About Us</title> became About Us - Company Name
Interestingly, this wasn't consistent - sometimes it was "company name Limited" and sometimes just "company name.
Anyone else notice this or is this a recent change?
-
Thanks for sharing your experience!
The title tags on the site in question were being automatically generated by the content management system. Due to the particular subject matter some titles tend to be quite long so it was decided to drop the company name which was being automatically appended and is itself rather long.
Unfortunately I don't have total discretion to modify page titles as I see fit, which makes things interesting!
I'm now implementing custom <title>tags so that the company name can be appended where it needs to be, in a consistent manner and drop it from the longer titles that need to take precedence. The company name isn't added to the longer titles.</p> <p>I agree that keeping your title short and specific helps, and adding the company name can boost trust and click-through.</p> <p>I guess we all need to remember to regularly check the titles being displayed in the SERPS and to really make an effort to educate content creators about creating good titles.</p> <p>Thanks.</p></title>
-
Doug,
About 45 days ago I took advise of a user here in the forum to reduce my title tags to one target keyword phrase for each of my city pages (i have about 5000 city pages) and at the time was doing research about adding the "company name" at the end of the title tag if room permitting that it was not to long.
I targeted a lower hanging fruit than my original two keywords reduced my target keyword to one phrase and added our company brand name to the end of the title tags for every page and IMO that was the silver bullet for me along with page content improvements our traffic has increased by 40% and lead conversions have also increased on our site.
And at the time this user told me it was a good idea to add my company name to the title tags and reduce to one target keyword I was researching my competitors and a few of them where already doing this so i figured why not give it a try? It has definitely worked for us and instead of fighting for placement on page two of Google we are now for most searches on page one in the top five results for all of them!
SEO success story for sure using seo moz tools and taking some really good advice from a real expert on this forum.
Oh and also Google use to change my title tags also just as you mentioned...I can no longer find pages where Google is re writing them anymore. So I guess I did something right.
Good luck!
-
Thanks EGOL, I agree it's frustrating, especially as in this case we took the decision to remove the company name from the title...
As well as company names, and URLS/Domain do they use any other "entities?"
-
Google has been doing this for a while.
Sometimes they add your URL to the end of a title tag.
I have some title tags that are short but have my URL at the end. Google is adding my URL on top of that. Looks like this.....
Keywords at Egols.com | egols.com
Sometimes they replace your title tag with words that match the querry.
I object to this because they have overwritten a title tag that with my marketing message such as "free shipping" or a kickass price that pulls in buyers.
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
-
Does cached duplicate content hurts seo by Google
If we have duplicate content or pages cached in Google which has been indexed months back, still it hurts the original pages? Old URLs with cache can be seen now in Google when we search for the same URLs.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google Custom Search Engine: Good Idea?
I created a Google Custom Search Engine for our site, but I"m not sure implementing it is a good idea. When I tested it with the public URL, I noticed that ads show up on the search engine that could potentially move visitors away from our site to our competitors. Has anyone had success with implementing a Google Custom Search Engine? Do the pros outweigh the cons? Thanks, Ruben
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Meta Descriptions - Google ignores what we have
Hi I still write meta descriptions to help with CTR. I am currently looking at a page where the CTR needs improving. I check the meta on Google SERPs & it isn't pulling through the meta description we have - but other info on the page. This isn't ideal - why does this happen? Will Google just make the decision and are descriptions not worth writing?
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Google is showing crazy results
Google is showing crazy results in these days sometimes my sites are on top of all keywords sometimes far behind in search engine in same day what is going on ????
Algorithm Updates | | GM0070 -
Google visits falling at the expense of Bing
Has anyone else noticed their percentage of search visits from Google slipping in the last few weeks at the expense of Bing? We've seen a 4% swing in the last month. Obviously Google is still the dominant presence (acconuting for 88.4% of all organic visits to our site kenwoodtravel.co.uk) but still it would be interesting to know if this is just a blip or more of a trend?
Algorithm Updates | | BrettCollins0 -
Can a google data refresh knock your pages out of the rankings?
I see that around mid November 2013 a handful of my sites pages dropped off of Google completely. It was around the data refreshes in November, and while everyone says it doesn't effect that much I was wondering if anyone knew if it could knock some of my pages out of the rankings for a specific keyword. Note - we had previously held muliple listings for different pages on our site for this particular keyword. Google kept the highest ranking and knocked the lower ones off. See attached image of our keyword ranking history to see what I mean. DcJJM0M
Algorithm Updates | | franchisesolutions0 -
Google dance/over optimized/paranoid?
Hi guys, hope your all OK and thanks in advance for taking a nosey at this. OK where to start - my rankings for the last 12 months have progressively improved every week, usually of the 300 KWs i track the last few months has seen approx 70 up/70down per week, but the improvements usually outweigh the declines. This week I saw a sudden drop though - 35 improvements and 112 declines. The strange thing was though, the improvements came on the more competitive KWs, and the less competitive words I haven't done much or any back linking for dropped. Seems silly me asking this question when I run that through my head ofcouse KWs you don;t work on will drop like flies? It should be plainly obvious those words would drop off but all have been improving on there own slowly over the last 6/7 months. Now if this was a penalty (nothing showing in webmaster tools) I would have expected it to come through on my KWs I have over done the backlinking for, but these are the 1's that improved. So is it just the Google Dance? I normally see some words such as the big 1 we target DJ Equipment go from position 13 - 24 can change hourly sometimes! Could it just be quite a few have dropped all at once and will pop back up this week? Also if anyone could give us any pointers in general on where you think we should be taking our SEO it would be much appreciated. I know we have been a little lazy with our backlinking and could do with some much better/ industry related websites linking to us, and there are title tags/metas on product page that need sorting.. aside these couple of issue's? DJs Only
Algorithm Updates | | allan-chris0