Google is not respecting the meta title
-
We're experiencing a peculiar situation with Google not respecting our meta <title>.</p> <p>As you can see in the first image (search result), the title <a href="http://open.iebschool.com/profesores/startups/">for the page</a> is a part of the content. This is relatevely normal for the description, but we never heard of Google doing this before.</p> <p>In the code, the <title> and meta description are correctly implemented.</p> <blockquote style="background-color: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> <p><meta name="description" content="Profesores, tutores, autores y docentes 2.0 de Open IEBS. Conoce su Biografía, experiencia, reputación, conexiones sociales y las valoraciones de alumnos."/><br /><title>Conoce los profesores, tutores, autores y docentes de Open IEBS.</title>
In a further research, we discovered that the title which is using is an
in anwith the following code (cleaned and simplified for the question):
<hgroup>
Pilar Soro
0 Seguidor
Para poder seguir al Profesor, debes de registrarte aquí.Profesora y experta en redes sociales. Formadora de docentes, [...]
</hgroup>Note: we're correcting the code since this is quite messy, but it's the one we have now
The point is that google has considered that this particular
is more important than the title itself. This would make sense if we were looking for that name, but the search was simply "site:domain.com".
Two things for which this is even more strange are the following:
-
while all the /profesor/%category%/ has the same code, this only happens in some search results and not in all of them; why is it appearing in some pages, but respecting my title in others?
-
the previous code is not the only one in the page, there are about 10 others and some are placed before and some are placed after; so, why this one and not the first or the last?
What is more strange is why this article in particular and not any other of the 10
on the page since some of them are placed before and some of them are placed after.
Provided this situation, we would like to know:
-
is this a common situation? Is it happening to more people?
-
why is it happening? Is it somehow related to
,
<hgroup>and
?
-
why that piece of code and not any other article? and why is it only happening in some pages?
-
more important, can it be corrected or can we take advantage of it somehow?
Thank you in advance. Any light you can shed on this will be well received!
</hgroup>
-
-
Google has been rewriting page titles for years, even on sites like Apple.com. Sometimes it's to better match user intent with the search, and sometimes it's because they think your title tag is spammy. Barry at Search Engine Roundtable has several pieces on this.
-
Thanks for your answer, David.
I believe they should respect what we, brands and developers, set as the important elements for our users. Although, it's their platform and they'll try to do what's best for theirs... (but they're not always right unfourtunately!).
-
Thank you for your answer, Dan. Hopefully, they'll get better at predicting a title; because in this case it's quite bad chosen.
-
We'll try this solution. It looks like it'll help.
Actually, we tried to get rid of the meta title, but our developer insisted in not removing it for some reason.
-
Some people disagree with my advice on this but from what I've seen, it works 85-90% of the time:
-
Remove name="title" content="Conoce los profesores de Startups | Open IEBS "/> as this is a virtual duplicate of <title></span><span>Conoce los profesores de Startups | Open IEBS </span><span class="webkit-html-tag"></title>
-
Add to the header.
I think if you do both these things, next time Google crawls your page, they should use your title.
-
-
I've seen this with our sites too. Title tags, meta descriptions, canonicals, robots.txt, etc. should all be considered just suggestions. Google will look at them and in most cases obey them, but they don't always.
-
Hi Oscar
Sorry not a direct or full answer but just to let you know i have definately seen a few instances of this too i.e. Google coming up with their own titles and replacing the pages actual title tags. If they think they can write a better title than whats in the tag they sometimes do
Cheers
Dan
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
-
Favicon not showing in google serps
Hi, I have a website where the favicon is not showing in the google mobile serps. It's appearing the default icon instead (world icon). This is the tag I have place in the head section of the website: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" /> The size of the favicon is 48x48 and it's appearing correctly in the browser tag. I've checked that the google robot can crawl it and in the server logs I can see requests from the "Google Favicon" user-agent. Has anyone had this same problem? Any advice?
Technical SEO | | dMaLasp0 -
Duplicate content or titles
Hello , I am working on a site, I am facing the duplicate title and content errors,
Technical SEO | | KLLC
there are following kind of errors : 1- A link with www and without www having same content. actually its a apartment management site, so it has different bedrooms apartments and booking pages , 2- my second issue is related to booking and details pages of bedrooms, because I am using 1 file for all booking and 1 file for all details page. these are the main errors which i am facing ,
can anyone give me suggestions regarding these issues ? Thnaks,0 -
Google Local Gone Loco
I am a bankruptcy attorney in Southern California. I have been doing my own SEO since I had a couple of bad experiences paying someone to "do" it in the past. If you want it done right, do it yourself I suppose. Anyway, I have been ranking well in Google local results. At first I peeked in at 3/3 showing on the first page of the searches. Then I climbed to Number 2 in local searches, probably as a result of finding sites and making sure my addresses, phone numbers and business names were all correct. However, this week (as I climbed to #3 spot in the local search for my city+ bankruptcy attorney, my Google local result dropped to page 2. One of my employees rated me on google local and gave me a google + which is gone and the pictures that I uploaded to Local Google are gone. I don't know if this is some kind of penalty because an employee gave me a rating (they were completely up front about working for me) or if something else is going on. I was also trying to claim my business on Yahoo (which resulted in some kind of "Account Suspension"). I have no idea what is going on. You can take a look at my site if it helps: http://ashcraftfirm.com We are trying to rank for "murrieta bankruptcy attorney" Thanks for any help you can provide.
Technical SEO | | gcashcraft0 -
Google local listings
im working with gutter installation company, and we're ranking for all the top keywords in google. the only thing that we're not ranking for is for the map results, for the keyword "gutter ma" since we're located in Springfield ma, i thing Google considers certain areas from Boston, because its more center of Massachusetts, What can i do to improve my rankings in maps for this keyword, because i know it wont work with PO box since i need to confirm an address? Thanks
Technical SEO | | vladraush990 -
Duplicating Keywords in Page Title
Hello All, I am currently trying to establish the TITLE tag of my homepage. I am trying to target 2 terms plus my company name. For example, purposes, the two keywords are: Widget Program Widget Software My company Name is: Widget Direct I originally had the title as: Widget Program | Software | Widget Direct My thought was that I didn't want to repeat the word "Widget" too many times. However, the SEOmoz on-page report card keeps telling me I should have the exact keyword in my title tag. In that case it would make the title: Widget Program | Widget Software | Widget Direct Do you think that is better so that I have each keyword in the title or will that result in a penalty because it looks like I'm stuffing the title with the keyword 'widget'? Any insight is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Robert-B0 -
Google Not Indexed WWW name
Here is my domain - http://www.plugnbuy.com . When i see through "site" google not showing with WWW index but the same when i do without WWW.. it is showing in search. So yesturday i changed the setting from GWM to preferred domain as a WWW appear but today still not showing anything... Please help..
Technical SEO | | mamuti0 -
Ranking on google.com.au but not google.com
Hi there, we (www.refundfx.com.au) rank on google.com.au for some keywords that we target, but we do not rank at all on google.com, is that because we only use a .com.au domain and not a .com domain? We are an Australian company but our customers come from all over the world so we don't want to miss out on the google.com searches. Any help in this regard is appreciated. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | RefundFX0 -
Google & Separators
This is not a question but something to share. If you click on all of these links and compare the results you will see why _ is not a good thing to have in your URLs. http://www.google.com/search?q=blue http://www.google.com/search?q=b.l.u.e http://www.google.com/search?q=b-l-u-e http://www.google.com/search?q=b_l_u_e http://www.google.com/search?q=b%20l%20u%20e If you have any other examples of working separators please comment.
Technical SEO | | Dan-Petrovic3