Google Rewriting PDF Titles
-
Has anyone else noticed Google rewriting the title of PDF documents?
-
Sure Wayne.
While there are differences between a web page and a PDF, from the concept of how Google handle's the data there is little difference. A crawler reads text and processes the data, which is then ranked and appears in search results. The same basic rules apply.
Here is an example:
-
Go to the following URL: http://centerforhealthysex.com/wp-content/uploads/. You can see this site allows the contents of this folder to be displayed (not a recommended practice).
-
Notice the first pdf file in the list: "alexandra-katehakis-biography.pdf"
-
Go to Google.com and search for the following without quotes: ".pdf site:centerforhealthysex.com". Notice the title shows as "download bio pdf - Center for Healthy Sex".
-
Return to Google.com and search for "alexandra katehakis biography". You will see the same file now has a title of "Alexandra Katehakis is a licensed Marriage, Family Therapist ..." In this case, Google grabbed the first line of text and used it as the title.
You can repeat this type of testing with almost any pdf or web page.
-
-
Yes, I've seen it with web pages but this is my first experience with PDF's. Anyone else seeing this?
-
Google reserves the right to change titles to represent what they feel is most appropriate for the user. A pdf document online is similar to a web page in that regard.
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
-
Not all images indexed in Google
Hi all, Recently, got an unusual issue with images in Google index. We have more than 1,500 images in our sitemap, but according to Search Console only 273 of those are indexed. If I check Google image search directly, I find more images in index, but still not all of them. For example this post has 28 images and only 17 are indexed in Google image. This is happening to other posts as well. Checked all possible reasons (missing alt, image as background, file size, fetch and render in Search Console), but none of these are relevant in our case. So, everything looks fine, but not all images are in index. Any ideas on this issue? Your feedback is much appreciated, thanks
Technical SEO | | flo_seo1 -
Google News problem
Hello to all. The latest Google algorithm changes have had a big impact on the way that Google news features stories, at least in my country. I've been featured heavily in Google News until about 6th of october, when the changes had the biggest impact, but since then, I haven't been featured at all. Prior to this, I would be featured for keywords on almost any article, not necessarily on the 1st position, but I was almost always there. Posts still show up in the dedicated News category, but not in the main search pages. I've seen a lot of websites being impacted, but some with lower ranks than mine still show up there. I haven't done any changes prior to the 6th of october, and I haven't done any link building campaings, just getting links from higher ranking news sites in my country, for articles I wrote. What I'd like to know is if there were any major changes for Google News and I'm not complying with any of them, or If i could check to see if there are any other problems. I don't have any penalties disclosed by Google, and no new errors in the Webmasters console, I'm just baffled by the fact that overnight the website was completely cut off from being featured in Google News. And one other strange thing, I'm now ranking better for searches that are kind of opposite to my website's main theme. Think about mainly writing about BMW, and less about AUDI, but ranking a lot better for the latter, and a lot less for the other. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | thefrost0 -
What should i do to index images in google webmaster?
My website onlineplants.com.au. It's a shopping cart website. I do have nearly 1200 images but none of the images are indexed in google webmaster? what should i do. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Verve-Innovation1 -
Some posts not showing on Google search if I seach them using post title?
Hello! Some of my WordPress blog posts aren't showing on the Google search result, even if I type the post title. What could be the issue? Is it my site text selection disabled issue or WordPress SEO by Yoast plug-in issue or something else? Moreover, if I search some of my post text (article content), I can't see relevant post on Google search. I use following code to protect my articles. Is it SEO friendly? .content {
Technical SEO | | Godad
-webkit-user-select: none;
-khtml-user-select: none;
-moz-user-select: none;
-ms-user-select: none;
user-select: none;
} my site:- http://goo.gl/tD2fS Thanks!0 -
Google Page speed
I get the following advice from Google page speed: Suggestions for this page The following resources have identical contents, but are served from different URLs. Serve these resources from a consistent URL to save 1 request(s) and 77.1KiB. http://www.irishnews.com/ http://www.irishnews.com/index.aspx I'm not sure how to fix this the default page is http://www.irishnews.com/index.aspx, anybody know what need to be done please advise. thanks
Technical SEO | | Liammcmullen0 -
Pages not indexed by Google
We recently deleted all the nofollow values on our website. (2 weeks ago) The number of pages indexed by google is the same as before? Do you have explanations for this? website : www.probikeshop.fr
Technical SEO | | Probikeshop0 -
Is the number at the top of google wrong
If I search a term, any term, Google states at the top 922,000 results (as an example). However, if you click the "O" in google at the bottom you can get the 2nd and 3rd and 4th page of results. Those numbers don't match. The result of my searches would show anywhere from 120-140 results, but the number at the top is in the tens of thousands if not millions. Am I missing something here? Shouldn't these numbers be the same?
Technical SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
How should I shorten my titles?
I've read that page titles can't/shouldn't be more than 70 characters long. Out of around 1,000 products we have about 150 that have legitimate titles that exceed this character limitation. We plan on automatically truncating these. Should I just cut the titles off at 70 characters or should I cut them off and add a "..."? Does it even matter?
Technical SEO | | dbuckles0