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.
Wrong titles in site links
-
Hello fellow marketers,
I have found this weird thing with our website in the organic results. The sitelinks in the SERP shows wrong written text. As in grammatically incorrect text.
My question is where does Google get the text from? It is not the page title as we can see it.
-
Yes, i did notice the missing "descriptive" title and description tag on the pages with incorrect grammar. I already send a note to the developer that he should change that.
It seams that there is to little text to work with for Google.
-
That's interesting. Don't forget you always have the ability to "demote" a site link. I would just use caution. If the page is the page you want to go to but the text isn't right, then I WOULD NOT demote that page. I would try and add the text you want to be there to either the top of the page in the 1st paragraph, your meta description and also check your page titles to make sure they are the way you want them too.
I like to do a site: search on my site to see which urls and page titles Google is pulling. Not sure this will help you but it's a best practice in my book. Just remember that Google doesn't have to use your meta data for it's SERPs.
I did a quick Google search to see if there was anything on comparing Google sitelinks and found an interesting article on clickz.com. It doesn't really answer your question but it's pretty insightful.
On a closing note, I would try and add meta descriptions and more descriptive title tags to your pages. For the site link "Met tekenen" (which links to http://www.tekenjetuin.nl/canvas/bewerken) the title tag of that page is <title>Tekenjetuin</title> and I didn't see a meta description. I would definitely try to add to the title of that page to try and help Google understand them better.
-
I did check the sourcecode and the text is actualy not on the page. So there must be an other way Google finds the text.
-
I am also facing the same issue what will be the best way to fix this otherwise regular updating the content will recover this problem ?
-
Site links are auto generated by Google's Algorithm and Google has been trying to get them to be more "useful" to the users that see them. I've seen that many times Google will either pull from my meta description or from the first paragraph of the page. This isn't always accurate but it's a general guideline.
Webmaster Help: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/47334?hl=en
Matt Cutts on Sitelinks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpR34uwujeY
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
-
Sitelinks are wrong
When I search my website on Google, the sitelinks that I have appear to be wrong. How can I fix this? I have all of my pages optimized.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | litesourceinc0 -
How can I find all broken links pointing to my site?
I help manage a large website with over 20M backlinks and I want to find all of the broken ones. What would be the most efficient way to go about this besides exporting and checking each backlink's reponse code? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StevenLevine3 -
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Do I have to many internal links which is diluting link juice to less important pages
Hello Mozzers, I was looking at my homepage and subsequent category landing pages on my on my eCommerce site and wondered whether I have to many internal links which could in effect be diluting link juice to much of the pages I need it to flow. My homepage has 266 links of which 114 (43%) are duplicate links which seems a bit to much to me. One of my major competitors who is a national company has just launched a new site design and they are only showing popular categories on their home page although all categories are accessible from the menu navigation. They only have 123 links on their home page. I am wondering whether If I was to not show every category on my homepage as some of them we don't really have any sales from and only concerntrate on popular ones there like my competitors , then the link juice flowing downwards in the site would be concerntated as I would have less links for them to flow ?... Is that basically how it works ? Is there any negatives with regards to duplicate links on either home or category landing page. We are showing both the categories as visual boxes to select and they are also as selectable links on the left of a page ? Just wondered how duplicate links would be treated? Any thoughts greatly appreciated thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
One Way Links vs Two Way Links
Hi, Was speaking to a client today and got asked how damaging two way links are. i.e. domaina.com links to domainb.com and domainb.com links back to domaina.com. I need a nice simple layman's explanation of if/how damaging they are compared to one way links. And please don't answer with you lose link juice as I have a job explaining link juice.... I am explaining things to a non techie! Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
How get rid of duplicate content, titles, etc on php cartweaver site?
my website http://www.bartramgallery.com was created using php and cartweaver 2.0 about five years ago by a web developer. I was really happy with the results of the design was inspired to get into web development and have been studying ever since. My biggest problem at this time is that I am not knowledgable with php and the cartweaver product but am learning as I read more. The issue is that seomoz tools are reporting tons of duplicate content and duplicate title pages etc. This is likely from the dynamic urls and same pages with secondary results etc. I just made a new sitemap with auditmypc I think it was called in an attempt to get rid of all the duplicate page titles but is that going to solve anything or do I need to find another way to configure the site? There are many pages with the same content competing for page rank and it is a bit frustrating to say the least. If anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated even pointing me in the right direction. Thank you, Jesse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WSOT0 -
Linking Sister-Sites - Diapers.com Example
Many of the big guns like 1800 Flowers, Diapers.com and others all have their sister sites in tabs at the top. Example: http://www.diapers.com/ with their 3 other properties. Since all properties link to one another on every page, it's really a wash, right? No real gain as engines know they are connected and it's the same link multiple times. No real problem either as it's natural for the user experience to have reciprocal links here between the brands. Any additional thoughts here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOPA0 -
Multiple sites linking back with pornographic anchor text
I discovered a while ago that we had quite a number of links pointing back to one of our customer's websites. The anchor text of these links contain porn that is extremely bad. These links are originating from forums that seems to link between themselves and then throw my customers web address in there at the same time. Any thoughts on this? I'm seriously worried that this may negatively affect the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeorgeMaven0