Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Pipe ("|") in my website's title is being replaced with ":" in Google results

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Pipe ("|") in my website's title is being replaced with ":" in Google results

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    6
    2665
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Kadel
      Kadel last edited by

      Hi ,

      One of the websites I'm promoting and working on is www.pau-brasil.co.il.
      It's wordpress-based website and as you can see the html's Title is "PauBrasil | some hebrew slogan".
      (Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/2f80EEY.gif)
      When I'm searching for "PauBrasil" (Which is the brand's name) , one of the results google shows is

      "PauBrasil: Some Hebrew Slogan" (Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/eJxNHrO.gif )

      Why does the pipe is being replaced with ":" ?
      And not just that , as you can see there's a "blank space" missing between the the ":" to the slogan.
      (note: the websites has been indexed by google crawler at least 4 times so I find it hard to believe it can be the reason)

      I've keep on looking and found out that there's another page in that website with the exact same title
      but when I'm looking for it in google , it shows the title as it really is , with pipe. ("|").
      (Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/dtsbZV2.gif)

      Have you ever encountered something like that?
      Can it be that the duplicated title cause that weird "replacement"?

      Thanks in advance,
      Kadel

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Kadel
        Kadel @Christy-Correll last edited by

        Hi Christy ,Sorry for the delay.

        I can't be 100% sure (after all it's Google) but here's what I did.
        On the homepage I've changed the title into this format:
        brand name + "|" + slogan with keyword
        while on the rest of the pages I have not changed the title and left it in the following format: Page's Title + "|" + Brand name After that , this website's title results appeared as above , without ":" or re-position of the brand in the title.

        Hope it will help.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Christy-Correll
          Christy-Correll Staff last edited by

          Hi Kadel, what is the current status of this issue? Any updates to report? Cheers, Christy

          Kadel 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • FedeEinhorn
            FedeEinhorn @Kadel last edited by

            I experience different results: when the brand name is in front on the title like "Brand - Tag Line" and you search for "tag line" google modifies the title to "Tag Line: Brand" which is quite annoying for me.

            I tested for a couple of month "Brand - Tag Line 1 | Tag Line 2" and searching for "tag line" didn't produced any title change, yet I hate the way the pipe looks on the title, so we decided to move back to "Brand - Tag Line" and well, stand whatever google decides to modify.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Francisco_Meza
              Francisco_Meza last edited by

              In Adwords the | (pipe) is not allowed in ads anymore. Maybe this is the case for organic too. You can use a - (dash) though and you should be good to go.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Kadel
                Kadel last edited by

                I believe I've found the answer so I'm posting it here for anyone else who would like to know:

                There don’t appear to be any examples of colon insertion if the brand name is already at the front of the page title. This is interesting since when Google decides to tweak the titles as above, it removes the dash or the pipe and replaces these with a colon. However if the brand name is already at the front, Google is happy to leave the dash or the pipe in.

                From: http://socialmediatoday.com/georgestevens48/1317336/google-rewriting-page-titles-time-brand

                I am about to change the brand name to Hebrew so it will be in front of the page title so I'll be able to confirm it.
                Will update you with the results.

                FedeEinhorn 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • Asmi-Ta

                  Staging website got indexed by google

                  indexing crawling noindex

                  Our staging website got indexed by google and now MOZ is showing all inbound links from staging site, how should i remove those links and make it no index. Note- we already added Meta NOINDEX in head tag

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Asmi-Ta
                  0
                • Ibis15

                  Google indexed "Lorem Ipsum" content on an unfinished website

                  Hi guys. So I recently created a new WordPress site and started developing the homepage. I completely forgot to disallow robots to prevent Google from indexing it and the homepage of my site got quickly indexed with all the Lorem ipsum and some plagiarized content from sites of my competitors. What do I do now? I’m afraid that this might spoil my SEO strategy and devalue my site in the eyes of Google from the very beginning. Should I ask Google to remove the homepage using the removal tool in Google Webmaster Tools and ask it to recrawl the page after adding the unique content? Thank you so much for your replies.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ibis15
                  0
                • Choice

                  How does Google handle fractions in titles?

                  Which is better practice, using 1/2" or ½"? The keyword research suggests people search for "1 2" with the space being the "/". How does Google handle fractions? Would ½ be the same as 1/2?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice
                  2
                • AdenaSEO

                  Rel="prev" / "next"

                  Hi guys, The tech department implemented rel="prev"  and rel="next" on this website a long time ago.
                  We also added a canonical tag to the 'own' page. We're talking about the following situation: https://bit.ly/2H3HpRD However we still see a situation where a lot of paginated pages are visible in the SERP.
                  Is this just a case of rel="prev" and "next" being directives to Google?
                  And in this specific case, Google deciding to not only show the 1st page in the SERP, but still show most of the paginated pages in the SERP? Please let me know, what you think. Regards,
                  Tom

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdenaSEO
                  1
                • isntworkdull

                  When i search for my domain name - google asks "did you mean" - why?

                  Hi all, I just noticed something quite odd - if i do a search for my domain name (see: http://goo.gl/LBc1lz) google shows my domain as first result, but it also asks "did i mean" and names another website with very similar name. the other site has far lower PA/DA according to Moz, any ideas why google is doing this? and more inportantly how i could stop it? please advise James

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isntworkdull
                  0
                • bondhoward

                  Google indexed wrong pages of my website.

                  When I google site:www.ayurjeewan.com, after 8 pages, google shows Slider and shop pages. Which I don't want to be indexed. How can I get rid of these pages?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward
                  0
                • Atlanta-SMO

                  Does Google Read URL's if they include a # tag? Re: SEO Value of Clean Url's

                  An ECWID rep stated in regards to an inquiry about how the ECWID url's are not customizable, that "an important thing is that it doesn't matter what these URLs look like, because search engines don't read anything after that # in URLs. " Example http://www.runningboards4less.com/general-motors#!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 Basically all of this: #!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 That is a snippet out of a conversation where ECWID said that dirty urls don't matter beyond a hashtag... Is that true? I haven't found any rule that Google or other search engines (Google is really the most important) don't index, read, or place value on the part of the url after a # tag.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atlanta-SMO
                  0
                • CupidTeam

                  My website (non-adult) is not appearing in Google search results when i have safe search settings on. How can i fix this?

                  Hi, I have this issue where my website does not appear in Google search results when i have the safe search settings on. If i turn the safe search settings off, my site appears no problem. I'm guessing Google is categorizing my website as adult, which it definitely is not. Has anyone had this issue before? Or does anyone know how to resolve this issue? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CupidTeam
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.