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.
I changed my home title and meta description but on google, i still see the old title and meta description. Whats the problem here?
-
I basically changed the title and meta description of my homepage and when i search on google, it still shows old. Whats the issue?
-
We never know exactly why Google makes the determinations it does. Maybe your competitor's site is better optimized for luxury cars, or maybe it has to do with links to the page. SEO is always done in a bit of a black box...
-
First, when you search " Exotic Car Rental Miami " , the link up above us, which has no exotic car rental miami in its title, Displays their full title of " Luxury Car Rental Miami Florida "
Second, when i search " Luxury Car Rental Miami " on google, it still doesn't show my full title. it still only shows the first half
the reason i added Exotic Car Rental Miami and Luxury Car Rental Miami to my title, is so i can rank high for both. but then when i look at the search results, (regular and incognito) it shows only the first half of the title.
I looked at the cached version of my website , clicking the the green arrow as you said, i saw the full title on page source. Confirming to me that the whole title got crawled.
if, as you said, google shows the most relevant part of your title, if i search luxury car rental miami, shouldnt it show my full title ?
It just confuses me that other websites show their full title when i search exotic car rental miami and luxury car rental miami
-
Google tries to show the result that is most specifically relevant to your search. When you search for "Exotic Car Rental Miami", "Exotic Car Rental Miami" is the most relevant part of the title. [Google uses the title and description you supply as strong suggestions, but it does not always use them.] Since you were not looking for Luxury Car Rentals, Google figures that part is not relevant to you.
I am not sure which parts of the rest you didn't understand?
When you do a search, you can click on the little green triangle next to the URL in the search results to see what the page looked like the last time Google crawled it, and the date on which Google crawled it.
As far as anonymous search, Google learns from your searches, so the results you see can be different depending on what you have done in the past. If you use an anonymous browser window (like Incognito on Chrome) you can avoid this.
-
i see what you're saying
For my website, " Prestige Luxury Rentals ", i have the tile " Exotic Car Rental Miami - Luxury Car Rental Miami (57 characters)". when i search my websites name or the entire title on google, my full title shows up. Fine but, when i search the keyword " Exotic Car Rental Miami ", it only shows " Exotic Car Rental Miami " on my website's title. The meta description fully shows but not the title. What's the issue here?
Also, i dont understand what you mean by
"" If I click to see the cached version (it was cached on May 12) and look at the source, I see the same thing, with a slightly longer title, Exotic Car Rental Miami - Luxury Car Rental Miami Florida.
It wouldn't be odd for Google to shorten the title in the case of my search on the URL. (When I search for the full title, I see the full title in the SERP.)
Did you do an anonymous search when you were checking? You might be picking something up from your own history """ ??. I'm new and still learning
-
Is your site prestigeluxuryrentals.com (from your sig)?
If I search on that URL, I see:
Title: Exotic Car Rental Miami
Description: Prestige Luxury Rentals offers the newest exotic & luxury cars for rent. Book an exotic car rental or luxury car rental in Miami, Miami Beach, and South.If I click to see the cached version (it was cached on May 12) and look at the source, I see the same thing, with a slightly longer title, Exotic Car Rental Miami - Luxury Car Rental Miami Florida.
It wouldn't be odd for Google to shorten the title in the case of my search on the URL. (When I search for the full title, I see the full title in the SERP.)
Did you do an anonymous search when you were checking? You might be picking something up from your own history...
-
^ Yes! Very important to note - thanks Tom!
-
As long a your website is verified in Google Webmaster Tools, try logging in and submit your URL via the Fetch as Google tool (Crawl > Fetch as Google).
Nothing is 100% certain, but just like Patrick said it might take a few days for Google to crawl your website.
Also, Google doesn't always show the meta description you designate in your source code. Cyrus says it best in his comment here:
"..Google will use your search query to populate the description with what it thinks is relevant. So different search queries will pull different descriptions into Google results for the same URL. So what you see isn't what every searcher sees for every query."
Hope that helps!
Tom
-
Hi there
Google more than likely hasn't crawled your site to notice the changes you implemented. Depending on the size and popularity of your site, it could take some time before these changes reflect in search results.
Here are some suggestions to help the process:
- Check your server responses
- Check your robots.txt and meta tags
- Verify your site in Google & Bing Webmaster Tools
- Update your sitemap and upload it to Google & Bing Webmaster Tools
- Make sure your site is crawlable for Googlebot
- Google also crawls through inbound links to your site - take a look at your Local SEO for some potentially quick and easy wins
Hope this all helps - just have to wait patiently while Google recognizes your changes - shouldn't be an issue! Good luck!
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
-
Massive unexplained organic traffic drop; disappeared from Google
Hi there,
Search Behavior | | katelynroberts
Our site has experienced a huge organic traffic drop, specifically from Google. The drop occurred on Feb 19 and I've got no clue why it happened. We have not made any significant changes to the website and it doesn't look like there was an algorithm update last week. We don't have any Google penalties or indexing issues noted, and the drop isn't specific to any particular segment/region/keyword. What am I missing? Any advice or insight is super duper appreciated. Our site is a Wordpress/WooCommerice e-commerce site with a blog and long-standing #1 ranks for keywords related to our main product offering. Screen Shot 2024-02-26 at 3.12.25 PM.png
Screen Shot 2024-02-26 at 3.07.52 PM.png0 -
Skewed results in Google
Im just curious.. Im sure a lot of you, like me, Google your own search terms on a fairly frequent basis. Does doing this skew the result you are actually seeing? As in, does Google tailor the results more to my liking, and therefore perhaps show my own site (which I would click through to often enough) higher on the page that it actually is? Sometimes I swear that happens. Steve.
Search Behavior | | blitzna100 -
& And + symbols - How does Google read these?
How does/can Google read the plus and ampersand symbols? For instance if I optimise a webpage for 'black & white football' and another page for 'black + white football' would there be any difference in ranking position? Does Google take notice of such symbols or will it only pick up on the keywords 'black white football'?
Search Behavior | | Adam_SEO_Learning0 -
How to setup google analytics snapshot
Hello all! I get these awesome emails from google about a specific site. But I am not sure how, and why. But I like the data it generates. I am uploading a screen shot. They are called Analytics' Snapshot. My question is basically: How to setup google analytics snapshot to report on a specific website in my account? Because I have several I track - Over 40 domains, but I am mostly concered with like 4 -5 of them, I would like to report on. Thanks Mozers!! GJF3iQX
Search Behavior | | smstv0 -
My website disappears off google!
So this might be kinda of a weird question... Every morning and night I check the ranking of a website that I am building.. The ranking has gone up a lot the last two months. It went from the fifth page to now the second page. I have a issue where some days I check Google my website is completely gone! I go through every page for my keyword and it's not there! After a couple of days of frustration I check again and all of a sudden it is there but now at a higher ranking... I went through the code to make sure there's a not a not follow code in the robots.txt page... Btw another weird thing is so then I look up my website on a google out of country like google.sg and I'm ranking first page like number 5 but again disappeared off google usa. Literally driving my crazy.. does anyone know why this could be? Btw the first time it disappeared I went into webmasters and sent a request because I thought I got penalized but they responded they could not find any spam and I was NOT penalized...
Search Behavior | | BecCan0 -
Is a Shorter Page Title Better?
Is there any evidence that SEs give a greater weighting to keyword phrases in the page title if there are less characters? For example: 1. "Buy Silver Bullion" 2. "Buy Silver Bullion Coins Bars Rounds Easily Privately Securely" The key phrase I am trying to optimize for is "Buy Silver Bullion." To my knowledge, current practices would say the 2nd phrase is better optimized since it contains more keywords and it has a few USPs. But is there any evidence that the 1st example would be higher ranked in google for the phrase "Buy Silver Bullion" because it is more focused than the 2nd?
Search Behavior | | nwright0 -
How do i fix my duplicate title tags
I joined as member to this site yesterday and have found a few isuues, long page descriptions X 7 ( all now fixed ) and 3 X duplicate title tags. The title tags duplicated are www.daygo-express.co.uk www.daygo-express.co.uk/ and www.daygo-express.co.uk/sitemap/ how do i fix these issues, i am by no means a webmaster and only use simple 1&1 package as a host. Do i need to insert robots txt?, if so can someone with knowledge writeit for me and post please. Also does the robots txt need to placed in the heder section. many thanks Dee
Search Behavior | | daygoexpress0 -
Studies on influence of meta description on CTR
After having answered quite a lot of questions here, I figured it was about time to ask one of my own. Can anybody point me to decent (experimental) research articles or blogs that actually show variations in meta descriptions influence the Click Through Rate (CTR) of searchers? On dozens of websites on the internet it is stated that 'meta descriptions affect CTR', but (good scientific) sources for those statements are nowhere to be found. The only research I can find that comes closest to providing any evidence is a translated study by dynamical.biz, which states that searchers LOOK a lot at the meta description, but this study (atleast in the translation) mentions nothing of searchers actually CLICKING it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Search Behavior | | Theo-NL0