Why Google scrambles/change our product page titles? And descriptions too?
-
Here is an interesting issue we are noticing lately: Google is always more scrambling and changing the title of our product pages in the SERPs results.
Here is an example:
Keyword: "bach arioso sheet music". We are down at the 6th spot, and the shown title is different from what's defined inside the TITLE tag of that page.
And that appears often for other keywords/product pages. Why's that? How can we control that? It is hard for us to optimize titles and test CTR and other metrics if Google is showing them differently to the users.
Similar issue with the description tag: sometimes Google instead of showing to the users the description tag contents, shows part of the text taken from the page even though the searched keywords are included both in the title and the description tag, and so I can't find justification to show text taken from the page instead... it is quite difficult to understand the motivation beyond all this!
Any thoughts are very welcome. Thanks!
Fab.
-
Yes, that makes sense... I will do that. Thanks!
-
You need to change it to something less keyword stuffed and less spammy looking that you are happy with and see how Google handles it. Experiment.
BTW, you and I may not think your title is keyword stuffed or spammy, but that does not matter - what matters is the algorithm is interpreting it as that, so you need to change it to get the title in the search results that is better than what Google is deciding for you.
-
Hmm... I guess I need to test a little bit more on this. That's good to know, thank you!
-
I think the way Google change them is often terrible, and I don't understand why it changes my titles and not my competitors' when they are pretty much all alike. I don't see much logic here... anyhow, if this is the way it works and there is nothing I can do about it, that's ok. I will make some more research on this topic. Thanks!
-
Yeah, I can understand that, but how can I test different titles, wording, etc if Google change them anyway? That becomes something hard to test... am I wrong?
-
Agreed, Google tend to change them when the algorithm perceives that the title of the page is not useful to the searcher. This usually happens when the title is spammy or keyword stuffed. Google is trying to better serve the searcher and not the webmaster by doing this. You need to experiment/split test the title.
-
Google tends to scramble the title tag and description tag up if they think that it will serve the user better based on the provided search query.
Sometimes Google changes title tags so they'll contain branding purposes.
Anyway nothing is wrong with Google changing your title and/or description tags. Google always serves what they think is best for the users. I've noticed that they were scrambling my things up too and they actually helped me improve my title tag.
-
Why not change it to the way Google is displaying it? Maybe they like that better
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
-
Glossary/Terms Page - What is the best way?
We have a glossary section on our website with hundreds of terms. At the moment we have it split into letters, e.g. there one page with all the terms starting with A, another for B etc.. I am conscious that this is not the best way to do things as not all of these pages are being indexed, and the traffic we get to these pages is very low. Any suggestions on what would be the best way to improve this? The 2 ideas I have at the moment are Have every term on a separate page, but ensuring there is enough copy for that term Leave as is, but have the URL change once a user scrolls down the page. E.g. the first page would be www.website.com/glossary/a/term-1 then once the user scrolls past this terms and onto the next one the URL would change to www.website.com/glossary/a/term-2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brian-madden0 -
Ecommerce Site - Duplicate product descriptions & SKU pages
Hi I have a couple of questions regarding the best way to optimise SKU pages on a large ecommerce site. At the moment we have 2 landing pages per product - one is the primary landing page with no SKU, the other includes the SKU in the URL so our sales people & customers can find it when using the search facility on the site. The SKU landing page has a canonical pointing to the primary page as they're duplicates. Is this the best way? Or is it better to have the one page with the SKU in the URL? Also, we have loads of products with the very similar product descriptions, I am working on trying to include a unique paragraph or few sentences on these to improve the content - how dangerous is the duplicate content within your own site? I know its best to have totally unique content, but it won't be possible on a site with thousands of products and a small team. At the moment I am trying to prioritise the products to update. Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Should I use individual product pages for different formats of the same product?
Hi All -- I'm working with a publishing client who is launching a new site. They have a large product catalogue offered in a number of format types (print, ebook, online learning, packages) with each one possessing a unique ISBN code. From past experience, I know that ISBN codes can be a really important ranking factor. We are currently trying to sort out product page guidelines. The proposed methods are: A single product page for all formats. The user then has the option to select which format they wish to purchase. The page would contain all key descriptors for each format, including: individual ISBN, format, title, price, author, etc. We would then use schema mark-up just to assist search engines with understanding and crawling. BUT we worry that the single page won't rank as well as say an invidual product page with a unique ISBN in the URL (for example: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470573325.html) Which leads to the next option... Individual URLs for each format. We understand that most e-commerce guidelines state you shouldn't dilute link equity amongst multiple pages with very similar products and descriptions. BUT we want searchers to be able to search by individual ISBN and still find that specific format within the SERPs. This seems to rule out canonicalizing, because we don't prefer one format over the other and still want say the ebook to show up as much as the print version. If anyone has any other options or considerations that we haven't thought about, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, U
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HarborOneBank0 -
Wise or cluttery for a website? Should our "out of the mainstream" of popular products be listed on our site? (older/discontinued, umfamiliar brands, parts to products, etc...)
For instance, should we list replacement parts for a music stand? Or parts for a trumpet, like a valve button? To some, this seems like a cluttery thing to do. I suppose another way to ask would be, "Should we only list the high quantity selling items that are well branded and that everyone shops for, and leave the rest off the website for instore customers only to buy?" (FYI: Our website focus is for our local market mainly, and we're not trying to take on the world per-say, but if the world wants in, that's cool too.) (My thought here is that if a customer walks into our retail store and they request an odd ball part or item... we go hunting for it and find it for them. Or perhaps another Music Store needs a part? To me, it's ALL for sale,... right? Our retail depth, should be reflected in our online presence as much as possible,... correct? I'd personally choose to list the odd balls on our site, just as if a customer was standing in the store. Another side thought is, if we only list the main stream products... we are basically lessening our content (which could affect our rankings) and would be inviting ourselves into a higher competitive market place because we wouldn't be saying anything different than what most other music store sites out there say. I believe we need to show off our uniqueness,... and product depth (of course w/good SEO & content too) is really kinda it, aside of course also from good expert people and a large facility. But perhaps that's a wrong way to look at it?) Thanks, Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kevin_McLeish0 -
Urgent Site Migration Help: 301 redirect from legacy to new if legacy pages are NOT indexed but have links and domain/page authority of 50+?
Sorry for the long title, but that's the whole question. Notes: New site is on same domain but URLs will change because URL structure was horrible Old site has awful SEO. Like real bad. Canonical tags point to dev. subdomain (which is still accessible and has robots.txt, so the end result is old site IS NOT INDEXED by Google) Old site has links and domain/page authority north of 50. I suspect some shady links but there have to be good links as well My guess is that since that are likely incoming links that are legitimate, I should still attempt to use 301s to the versions of the pages on the new site (note: the content on the new site will be different, but in general it'll be about the same thing as the old page, just much improved and more relevant). So yeah, I guess that's it. Even thought the old site's pages are not indexed, if the new site is set up properly, the 301s won't pass along the 'non-indexed' status, correct? Thanks in advance for any quick answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDMcNamara0 -
How can I see all the pages google has indexed for my site?
Hi mozers, In WMT google says total indexed pages = 5080. If I do a site:domain.com commard it says 6080 results. But I've only got 2000 pages in my site that should be indexed. So I would like to see all the pages they have indexed so I can consider noindexing them or 404ing them. Many thanks, Julian.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | julianhearn0 -
Changing meta title dynamically e.g. with number of reviews in title. Is this a problem?
I would like to put the number of reviews in the meta title of a product page. I noticed that tripadvisor for example does the same. However I read in some places that people encountered problems with frequent title tag changes. Did you ever encounter problems by just changing numbers in title tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Do you think it is really a problem if just the number of the reviews changes? what about putting number of reviews in the meta description instead?0 -
Is there any delay between crawling a page by google and displaying of the ratings in rich snippet of the results in google?
Is there any delay between crawling a page by google and displaying of the ratings in rich snippet of the results in google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NEWCRAFT0