Can Google display a diffrent page title?
-
Hi if I search google UK for the phrase car leasing, google returns my listing as
Car Lease Deals
However the same search on Yahoo or Bing bring back
Contract Hire | Vehicle & Car Leasing Deals | Car Lease Deals
this is the real page title. Why would this happen?
Thanks
Andy
-
Actually, Google often changes title tags, especially based on the query. They've been doing this for a couple of years now.
-
To add my experiance to this, it seems to happon more commonly when it feels your h1 or the serch term e.t.c. is more relivent to the search.
Depending on the search, it can harm or hurt. In terms of ranking for your keyword it shouldn't be a problem, but clickthrough wise it is more iffy.
-
Neither. Bad that you have less control over them, but potentially good that Google is showing something different, if it results in more clickthroughs. Unfortunately there is no way to test for that that I'm aware of, at least not while they're changing the title.
I'm not the type that recommends relying on Google to pick the best title for your page, but to be honest, "Contract Hire | Vehicle & Car Leasing Deals | Car Lease Deals" is fairly keyword heavy, and isn't that attractive to click on. A title like "Car Lease Deals" might do better in terms of clickthrough rates, but that's just my speculation.
Changing the title tags seems to be Google's answer to SEO-focused title tags that are packed with keywords, and I think it's a good thing for users. Hard to say for webmasters, but at the moment they don't give us any choice in the matter, since I don't believe they give us the option to turn it off.
This paragraph is speculation on my part: They're likely going to be changing the title based upon (A) things the user is looking for and (B) what else your page says. So if the user looked for "vehicle leasing deals", Google might choose to show that portion of your title tag. On the other hand, they might choose to show "Car Lease Deals" if that phrase is more common on the page and used in header tags, etc.
-
Hi Kane thanks for your speedy answer. Is this a good thing or a bad thing from my perpective.
Thanks
Andy
-
Wow nice! great info Kane, thanks for the link.
-
Yup, they've been changing title tags for at least a year now. Here's a Google Webmaster Blog post about it from Jan 2012:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/01/better-page-titles-in-search-results.html
-
To my understanding, no Google does not display titles dynamically, unless, of course the developer used Javascript or something. In any case it would be bad SEO practice and they wouldn't rank. My only guess would be caching maybe? Very odd indeed.
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
-
UX & Product Page Design
Hi I have a question regarding UX testing. Is it best when testing a product page to: 1. Redesign and test the new page - if it works, test elements to see what worked. 2. Start testing element by element to see what has a positive impact. We have differing opinions within the company, and I'd like to hear some feedback from others in the industry. Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
US domain pages showing up in Google UK SERP
Hi, Our website which was predominantly for UK market was setup with a .com extension and only two years ago other domains were added - US (.us) , IE (.ie), EU (.eu) & AU (.com.au) Last year in July, we noticed that few .us domain urls were showing up in UK SERPs and we realized the sitemap for .us site was incorrectly referring to UK (.com) so we corrected that and the .us domain urls stopped appearing in the SERP. Not sure if this actually fixed the issue or was such coincidental. However in last couple of weeks more than 3 .us domain urls are showing for each brand search made on Google UK and sometimes it replaces the .com results all together. I have double checked the PA for US pages, they are far below the UK ones. Has anyone noticed similar behaviour &/or could anyone please help me troubleshoot this issue? Thanks in advance, R
Algorithm Updates | | RaksG0 -
Deindexed from Google images Sep17th
We have a travel website that has been ranked in Google for 12-14years. The site produces original images with branding on them and have been for years ranking well. There's been no site changes. We have a Moz spamscore 1/17 and Domain Authority 59. Sep 17th all our images just disappeared from Google Image Search. Even searching for our domain with keyword photo results in nothing. I've checked our Search console and no email from Google and I see no postings on Moz and others relating to search algo changes with Images. I'm at a loss here.. does anyone have some advice?
Algorithm Updates | | danta2 -
Number of Items As a Google Ranking Factor??
If I search for "hiking boots" and scan down the SERPs I see the following... Google reports "483 items" for the Zappos.com page. Google reports "Results 1 - 36 of 85" for the Shoebuy.com page (and that does not appear in their code). So, Google is obviously paying attention to the depth of your information or the number of items that you are showing. If they think that is important enough to count and report in the SERPs, might they also be using that information as a ranking factor?? PRACTICAL APPLICATION FOR SEO: If google is using this information, perhaps people should list all of their color, size, etc variants on a single page. For example if you sell widgets in five colors, instead of making one page for each color, list all five on the same page.
Algorithm Updates | | EGOL1 -
Why am i not ranking in the top 50 for the keyword 'cocktails' even though all my other cocktail related keywords are in the first 2 pages of Google???
I have checked the first 50 pages of google for my website www.socialandcocktail.co.uk using the keyword 'cocktails'. It is NOT to be found. However, if I search for other keyword combinations eg cocktail recipes, cocktail bars etc they are all in the first 2 pages! What is going on????????
Algorithm Updates | | cocktailboss0 -
Drop in Traffic from Google, However no change in the rankings
I have seen a 20% drop in traffic from google last week (After April 29th). However when I try to analyze the rank of the keywords in the google results that send me traffic they seem to be the same. Today (6th March) Traffic has fallen further again with not much/any visible change in the rankings. Any ideas on what the reason for this could be? I have not made any changes to the website recently.
Algorithm Updates | | raghavkapur0 -
Can AJAX implementation affect the rankings in Google Panda?
Hi there, I have the following situation with one of our job sites. We migrate the site to a new application, which is better from design point of view and also usability. For this we use a lot AJAX especially in searches. So every time a user is filtering down their search new results will be shown on the page, at the same url and with no page load. But, having this implementation. affected Bounce rate - which increased from 38% to nearly 60%, PI/visits - which are now half, at 3 and also Avg Time on Site is half that is used to be coming to 2,5 min from nearly 6 min. From Rand post, it is clearly that the content is very important in Google Panda, and all of these parameters we should consider, as it is telling the quality of the content. So, my question will be, can this site be hit by Panda updates (maybe later on) because Bounce Rate, PI/Visits and Avg Time on site, decreased in such way? At the moment we don't measure the Ajax impresion, but as I understood that we can do that though virtual pages in GA, does anyone of you have the experience how to handle this? Won't be this an artificial increase? Thanks, Irina
Algorithm Updates | | InformMedia0 -
Can anyone explain these changes to our Titles in the SERPS?
Hi there, We've been doing well in the SERPS over the past few weeks. Our previous meta title was displayed as: "Hunter Original Tall - Buy Original Tall Online Here" However, recently we've seen the title in the SERP switch over to: "Hunter Original Tall - Cloggs.co.uk" This has occurred on several of our product pages which display a particular style of a certain brand. So for example: "Ugg Bailey Button - Cloggs.co.uk" Has anyone else experienced these changes or can explain why this may have happened?
Algorithm Updates | | NigelJ
There is not change to the source code and our Titles have proven to have good click through rates in the past. Any ideas mozzers?0