Why is Google replacing our title tags with URLs in SERP?
-
Hey guys,
We've noticed that Google is replacing a lot of our title tags with URLs in SERP. As far as we know, this has been happening for the last month or so and we can't seem to figure out why.
I've attached a screenshot for your reference.
What we know:
- depending on the search query, the title tag may or may not be replaced.
- this doesn't seem to have any connection to the relevance of the title tag vs the url.
- results are persistent on desktop and mobile.
- the length of the title tag doesn't seem to correlate with the replacement.
- the replacement is happening at mass, to dozens of pages.
Any ideas as to why this may be happening?
Thanks in advance,
Peter -
Hi Jesse,
Looking through our change log, it seems like our marketing team removed "| Mobify" from all title tags on July 2nd.
They did it because "Mobify" is already in the domain name and is generally mentioned on all pages, so they didn't feel like it was necessary to call it out in the title tags too.
I'm going to add it back and see what happens. Will keep you posted!
Best,
Peter -
Hi again Peter,
That is very interesting and I see your confusion here. I repeated the same test and was given the same results without your brand name in query.. Still when Google is listing the title they are listing your brand name.
It seems to me that they really want your brand name to show in this title. Why? I'm not entirely sure. But that's what they're adding to your title here..
Try shortening your title on that page by a word or two and adding a pipe (|) and "Mobify." Make that your test page for this issue and see what Google does with it when the change populates. I have a funny feeling it might pull your full title at that point.
Most sites out there try to drag their domain/brand into each page title anyway. You can call it "best practice" or just a "funny habit" but I feel like this is what Google is looking for with your site.
I'm incredibly curious, so if you don't mind trying this out and reporting back I would be greatly appreciative.
Thanks and good luck!
-
Thanks for taking your time to answer, Jesse!
Your hypothesis makes total sense, and I was hoping that was the case. Unfortunately, under further inspection, I'm still not sure.
Check this out. We have a page with a title tag "Retail App Engine: The Next Step in Your Mobile Commerce Strategy". I've attached a screenshot of what happens when I search for "Retail App Engine." I don't see why Google would not like our title tag in this case.
If you have any further ideas, I would really appreciate them!
-
If I may chime in, I'm guessing that the search was actually "site:mobify.com mobify" (without quotes). Whether that's right or wrong, however, I know does't answer the question. However, when you do that search, you notice that there are numerous examples of similar occurrences. In each case, the titles are quite long. This situation has been noticed before and there was even a post about it on the Moz blog by Ruth Burr Reedy. In that post, Ruth tracked down a likely possible cause as being that the title provided by the author is too long and because of that Google replaces it with it's best algorithmic alternative.
Peter, try shortening the titles and see if that solves your problem.
-
This was intriguing to me so I dug in a little and I have an initial theory here:
In the example you provided you seem to be searching with your brand name only. "Mobify" is bolded telling me that was a searched keyword.
The title tag for the page in question reads: "25 Top Design Upgrades to Make Your Mobile Revenue Skyrocket [SlideShare]"
My bet is that because you do not have the brand name in your title tag, Google is looking to display something that does carry this particular keyword. In this case it is looking for something with the word "Mobify" in it and finding it in the URL. If you take out the SlideShare portion of your title and replace it with "| Mobify" my guess is this problem will go away.
Look at the other URLs you are having this problem with and tell me if the brand name is missing from it but present in the searched query.
Let me know if this works!
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
-
Added a canonical ref tag and SERPs tanked, should we change it back?
My client's CMS uses an internal linking structure that includes index.php at the end of the URLs. The site also works using SEO-friendly URLs without index.php, so the SEO tool identified a duplicate content issue. Their marketing team thought the pages with index.php would have better link equity and rank higher, so they added a canonical ref tag, making the index.php version of the pages the canonical page. As a result, the site dropped in the rankings by a LOT and has not recovered in the last 3-months. It appears that Google had automatically selected the SEO-friendly URLs as the canonical page, and by switching, it re-indexed the entire site. The question we have is, should they change it back? Or will this cause the site to be reindexed again, resulting in an even lower ranking?
Technical SEO | | TienB240 -
After you remove a 301 redirect that Google has processed, will the new URL retain any of the link equity from the old URL?
Lets say you 301 redirect URL A to URL B, and URL A has some backlinks from other sites. Say you left the 301 redirect in place for a year, and Google had already replaced the old URL with the new URL in the SERPs, would the new URL (B) retain some of the link equity from URL A after the 301 redirect was removed, or does the redirect have to remain in place forever?
Technical SEO | | johnwalkersmith0 -
How can I avoid duplicate brand name in the title serp?
Hello, How can I avoid duplicate brand name in the title serp? For example:
Technical SEO | | jh0sz
In this page: https://www.latam.com/es_cl/ The title setted is: <title>LATAM Airlines en Chile | Sitio Oficial</title>
But in the SERP show: LATAM Airlines en Chile | Sitio Oficial - LATAM.com Can I avoid LATAM.COM at the end of the title? Regards 8J3jEAX1 -
International SEO - Hreflang tags and URL Structure
Hello, I wonder if any SEO internationalisation experts can help. We are a UK centric business with a .com domain which all our traffic currently goes to. We have been growing in the US and are therefore looking to internationalise our website by building out some US pages using the subfolder .com/us. Since the keywords we wish to target in the US are different to the keywords we are targeting elsewhere, when implementing hreflang tags is it possible to use a different URL for the US page? So let’s say we are targeting ‘estate car’ generally but want to target ’station wagon’ as the keyword for the equivalent US page, can the URLs be different? Example: General page: www.example.com/estate-car US: www.example.com/us/station-wagon Hreflang tags: Would that be the correct implementation? Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | SEOCT0 -
Updated Title Tag preference
Hi, This was a topic a couple years ago https://moz.com/community/q/title-tag-use-comma-pipe-or-colon I was wondering if there was any update on this as the consensus on this thread seemed to say using a pipe as a separator is best, but in Moz's title tag recommendations it has hyphen and pipe Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name Does anyone know if using a pipe | between the primary keyword and secondary has adverse effects? Also, does removing the brand name for the sake of length hurt you in any way? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Old Redirected Domain is replacing my current domain on SERPs
Hello everyone, All of a sudden a 2 year old redirected domain is replacing my current domain for 2 weeks now, my site is apitus.com and my old domain is aptitus.pe (the redirect is still working), however this only happens on my country google results (google.com.pe), if you check my site on google.com, everything looks ok even with a sitelink, which I no longer have on my country search results. Back to the issue, the first thing I thought was go to Search Console and take it out from the index, so I asked for access by uploading a file but since everything on that old site redirects to my current site I can't make such action. While still waiting for such access, is there anything else I could do?. Thanks in advance. PD: I'm adding the images of my SERPs CmzN8kY G3zZwwj
Technical SEO | | JoaoCJ0 -
Meta title Tag dilemma.... need help
Hey, Guys I have a dilemma that I cannot figure out how to solve. One thing that I have learned is that the meta tag is probably one of the most important factors of SEO. I work in the industry of real estate and we are located in a mid-sized market, Augusta, GA, which does not have a hugely competitive digital marketplace. So, I have told my web developer the changes that I want her to make to our major sub-domain pages on our website. I am anticipating that once she makes these changes which will allow me to make the necessary SEO changes to website, that we will see some good results. I have one dilemma that I can't figure out how to solve with the meta title tag. Check out our rental section: http://aubenrealty.com/rentals.cfm Now, click on any rental property and it will take you to that rental's page. Notice the page title " Auben Realty- real estate....." This is identical for every active and non-active property on our website. Every time we create a new property, this is what it spits out. Now, take it a step further and click on " Contact me about this property," and you will see the same page title. My dilemma is, " How do we fix this?" My assumption is that the best page title would be the address for each property( ex, 1322 Laurel Street, Augusta Ga 30904), right ? Is this some kind of simple coding adjustment?
Technical SEO | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
Google not using <title>for SERP?</title>
Today I noticed that Google is not using my title tag for one of my pages. Search for "covered call search" Look at organic result 6: Search - Covered Calls Covered call screener filters 150000 options instantly to find the best high yield covered calls that meet your custom criteria. Free newsletter.<cite>https://www.borntosell.com/search</cite> - CachedNow, if you click through to that page you see the meta title tag is:Covered Call ScreenerEven the cached version shows the title tag as Covered Call ScreenerI am not logged in, so I don't believe personalization has anything to do with it.Have others seen this before?It is possible that "search - covered calls" was the title tag 9 months ago (before I understood SEO); I honestly don't remember. I cleaned all my titles up at least 6 months ago.Can I force Google to re-index the page? Its content has changed a few times in the last few months, and Google crawls my site frequently according to webmaster tools.
Technical SEO | | scanlin0