Why Won't Google Update My Title?
-
I have waited plenty of time. Google has cached several pages with the updated title placed in the <title>tags.<br /><br />However search results, continue to show otherwise.<br /><br />I read the following (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en)</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>If we’ve detected that a particular result has one of the above issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources. However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query. Once we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site. Users are scanning for their query terms or other signs of relevance in the results, and a title that is tailored for the query can increase the chances that they will click through.</em></p> <p>The reason I want to change my title, is because there seems to be a relevancy issue (as pointed out my other community members here.) Google is having trouble recognizing understanding what our site is about.<br /><br />So instead of a title that reads, "Felix And Fingers: Dueling Pianos" (as Google continues to use) I prefer "Dueling Pianos - Felix And Fingers"<em> </em> I don't believe Google is recognizing us correctly as a dueling piano company.<em><br /></em>Google doesn't seem to like that. Any idea why or how I might go about getting this updated?</p></title>
-
I would be willing to bet your issue is with authority and that is why it is being corrected. I have heard (cannot remember where) that in the algorithm that Google uses for titles it normalizes things. Like if I were to make a title called "Jets and the Joan" and constantly used "Joan and the Jets" in the page, it would normalize the title. If you look at everything on the page and off the page you are using the version that Google is showing, except for your title. I think more than likely that is what is overriding the title of the page. You would need to change things like your facebook, text on site, some OG data, ect to try to work it out. It might be more trouble than it is worth unless you are thinking this is killing your click through. Also one thing you might try as an experiment is to add more words like "A Dueling Piano Duet - Felix and the Fingers" and see if the extra words cause them not to match the other version and normalize it.
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
-
How can I find out the exact match visitors for a competitor's website?
Hi, I'm trying to find a way of finding out the estimated number of exact match visitors that a competitor's website has got. I know that SEO agencies can find this out, and there must be a way of doing this for myself. Thanks
Competitive Research | | MThacker0 -
I Got A Scraper Delisted From Google ...
I have an electronics niche news website. A scraper who had an online store selling products in my niche copied every one of my articles and posted them on his site under the heading "News" ... generally within 1/2 hour of me posting them on my site. His site was even showing up in the rankings before mine. I filed a copyright infringement claim with Google two weeks ago via their online form explaining what he was doing. Today, I received an email from Google saying that they have reviewed his site and have delisted it from the search engine. I just checked, and he is GONE ... completely delisted, no trace. My site traffic has also jumped at least 25% today. It pays to complain! Just sharing 😉
Competitive Research | | Humanovation3 -
So What's Up With Those Crappy Search Results?
I used to rank for some keywords now I've been outranked by crappy websites. But what amazes me most is that among the top 10 results for a particular keyphrase, 3 of these results point to websites that are no longer online! Worst than that, these websites have to backlinks! So how come 404 pages / non-existing websites rank higher than I do? Is Google loosing it or are they trying to create so much confusion in the hope that website owners will turn to Adwords?
Competitive Research | | sbrault740 -
Why is my competitor's site ranking #1?
I'm about to work for a local business website that offers cleaning services and products. The keyword they want the most is ruled by a very odd site; My client's competitor's site has been around for 7 years. (Less than the average of it's competitors. Less than my client's) Has 1 backlink. Lower PA MR MT & DA than any other in the SERP. It's a 1 page site made with Flash. They do not have FB or Twitter accounts. So I thought maybe they were ranking so well because of their traffic. But neither my client, me or my coworkers have ever heard of this company. And yet, they are ranking #1. And the only thing I notice that might have helped is that the title of their page is the exact keyword and nothing more. Any ideas?
Competitive Research | | Eblan0 -
How to Find Another Site's robots.txt File?
An SEO report, not by SEOmoz, says my top two competitors have robots.txt files that disallows spidering. I suspect that their robots.txt file doesn't disallow all spidering. How do I find out what is in their robots.txt files?
Competitive Research | | lbohen0 -
Why is razorservers.com the #1 result on Google for dedicated server hosting?
Why is razorservers.com the #1 result on Google for dedicated server hosting? The site also ranks well on Google for the keyword dedicated server. It outranks sites with a PageRank of 7 and 100k+ back-links. Thanks
Competitive Research | | stevenbond0 -
API's for User Profiles other than Alexa
Hi, We are building an app that requires some audience profiling of websites as part of its architecture. Alexa provides some of this info, along with visitors by country which is useful, however I am quite skeptical of the information it provides as it is well known it can be way off (particularly on smaller sites), so are there any other API's that provide better data along the same lines as Alexa? NOTE - The app will profiling websites without having their authorized logins etc, so it needs to be an API that doesn't require authorisation from the website to get the data . Many Thanks
Competitive Research | | James770