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.
Why are apostrophes and other characters still showing as code in my titles?
-
Hi,
I have a WordPress-based site and overall everything is working well. However, I can't seem to figure out how to get apostrophes and other characters to display normally.
Now, the problem isn't that they are displaying as code to normal visitors or up in the title bar, they are displaying as code to Google's bots as well as to SEOMOZ.
Example:
Normal visitor sees:
About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts
Google and SEOMOZ see:
About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts
I've played around with different ways of typing the title (not using character codes vs. using character codes) and nothing seems to work.
Any help or explanation would be appreciated.
-
Gabriel-
It's no problem for these codes to appear in other sections of the page. There are many character sets out there, and what may appear great to you (without codes) looks like gibberish to someone else. The codes help make for a uniform experience for everyone. For instance, there are no "smart quote" keys on your keyboard, yet some programs (like Word) will automatically insert these for you. To have these on a web page most systems will convert these to codes for you. The ampersand, however, falls into this category since it's often an escape character for other characters.
So, the place we're still really most concerned about is the meta title. I'm not sure why the mb_convert_encoding() function didn't work for you?
If you'd like me to take a closer look feel free to message me. This is solvable - I've done it before on WP sites.
-
One more thing - I've noticed that Google, SEOMOZ, and Firefox's View Source all show apostrophes, ampersands, and other characters as code not just in the title tag but also throughout the body of the page - so it is a general problem.
-
I actually removed site caching because it was causing some problems. But yes, I had it on previously.
I'm wondering if the wordpress function - wp_texturize - is doing something funny to the titles...
-
Gabriel-
Do you have some sort of site caching turned on?
-
Fixed some of the other issues with my site (had a bunch of white spaces in my php files) but this is still not working. I inserted your code and it doesn't break anything, but it doesn't work either from what I can tell...
-
Gabriel, I think we're close here... give this a try:
<title></p> <p><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?></p> <p><?php echo mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo('name', 'display'), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES'); ?></p> <p></title>
-
Okay, I found the line:
<title><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>
And I tried inserting your code multiple ways but now Fetch as Googlebot is saying the site is unreachable. I've reversed but still get same problem...
Strange stuff.
-
Look in your header.php file. Here's what the <title>tag code might look like. Again, you may need to wrap the mb function around more than one piece. This should get you started.</p> <blockquote style="color: #5e5e5e; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><title><?php</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">/*</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>Print the <title> tag based on what is being viewed.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span> */</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">global $page, $paged;</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">wp_title( '|', true, 'right' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog name.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>bloginfo( 'name' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog description for the home/front page.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">$site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $site_description && ( is_home() || is_front_page() ) )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo " | $site_description";</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add a page number if necessary:</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $paged >= 2 || $page >= 2 )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo ' | ' . sprintf( __( 'Page %s', 'oldheidelbergdeli' ), max( $paged, $page ) );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">?></title>
-
Thanks for looking into this. Approximately where would I place this code?
-
This worked for me....
$site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');
The text is getting encoding in the second half of your meta tag, so if you convert the encoding you should be able to get around this. You may need to apply this to several sections of that depending on what's going on... check the tag out on several pages.
Let me know how it works out.
-
Well what would be the html entity code for a standard apostrophe. And even if that is solved, the & is still not displaying correctly.
I've searched many forums for the answer but nothing seems to be coming up!
-
Hi Gabriel,
' Looks like an html entity code for some non-standard apostrophe. Not sure why though, it looks normal. Your apostrophe might need to be changed to a single quote instead.
-
I've done what you've said and this is what I've come up with:
<title><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>
Does anything look odd?
-
Ahh, you are right about the first ampersand. You should probably take a look at the wp_title() function and see if it's doing any html_special_chars filtering. Again, if nothing else seems to work, you could change up the "and" remove the possessive on Vancouver.
-
Thanks for the quick reply. I tried doing that but not luck. The odd thing is that using Google's Webmaster tools, I see that the meta title and some of the headings have the code in them whereas other body text doesn't. Either way, I need to resolve this.
I tested a page and here are a couple of lines:
<code><title>IT & Web Services | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts</title> Odd how the first & (and) looks fine whereas the second doesn't.</code>
-
Hey Gabriel-
Quick and dirty... you could change the meta title to Function 5 - Metro Vancouver IT and Web Experts.
Have you tried putting the full & in the meta title? There might be a double-conversion issue going on there.
-John
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
-
.xml sitemap showing in SERP
Our sitemap is showing in Google's SERP. While it's only for very specific queries that don't seem to have much value (it's a healthcare website and when a doctor who isn't with us is search with the brand name so 'John Smith Brand,' it shows if there's a first or last name that matches the query), is there a way to not make the sitemap indexed so it's not showing in the SERP. I've seen the "x-robots-tag: noindex" as a possible option, but before taking any action wanted to see if this was still true and if it would work.
Technical SEO | | Kyleroe950 -
Bing Webmaster Shows Domain without WWW
One of our sites shows thousands of 301 redirects due to domain without www in Bing Webmaster under crawl Information page. It’s been like this for a long time. None of the internal pages have domain without www, it was tested through Screaming Frog. We do have www preference set in google webmaster, but unfortunately bing doesn’t have this option. We also specify URL with www preference through structural data, but that still doesn’t help. Did anyone have similar problems with Bing, and how did you resolve it?
Technical SEO | | rkdc1 -
Does Title Tag location in a page's source code matter?
Currently our meta description is on line 8 for our page - http://www.paintball-online.com/Paintball-Guns-And-Markers-0Y.aspx
Technical SEO | | IstoresincThe title tag, however sits below a bunch of code on line 237
Does the location of the title tag, meta tags, and any structured data have any influence with respect to SEO and search engines? Put another way, could we benefit from moving the title tag up to the top? I "surfed 'n surfed" and could not find any articles about this. I would really appreciate any help on this as our site got decimated organically last May and we are looking for any help with SEO. NIck
0 -
Use of title tags on divs for SEO purposes
Hello community, I recently was asked by a client to analyze a website of a competitor. I did was he asked me to do but when I looked at the source code of the website I found this code: I changed the exact words into something for privacy reasons, but I never looked at a code like this.
Technical SEO | | JarnoNijzing
Using a div for an anchor I get but adding a title tag to the div? I never seen that before. Title tags on anchors, yes, using images in divs as background and then adding a title??? Does anyone have any experience with a code like this and if you do how does this impact rankings? Does it impact rankings at all and does anybody know of any correlation between the two? Looking forward for your responses. Regards Jarno0 -
Registered Trademark in a Meta Title or Content
I know that registered trademarks don't hurt SEO, however if the trademark is used in the middle of a popular search phrase (see below) will it hurt the site's chanced of getting ranked for this term. Example: Funkybrand® Shoes PS I found one brand that used the trademark Acuvue® contact lenses. thanks!
Technical SEO | | yanaiguana1110 -
Why am I not showing up in the SERP's or Google Local?
I have been trying to optimise the following site for both Google SERP's and Google Local - Pixel Primate The URL has been around for around 3 years now but they just updated the website and launched it in December 2012. I did the on-page optimisation early in January 2013 and Google seems to have indexed the changes, for the home page at least. One major keyword I am targeting for the home page is 'Web Design Leicester'. I understand that the DA is fairly low (24) so this is something I need to improve. However, I've experienced positive results fairly quickly from just on-page optimisation for other sites I have worked on. The site just doesn't seem to be ranking at all for any keywords. Maybe the industry type is just extremely competitve but I find it very strange to not be visible anywhere in the SERPs. The site does not seem to have any penalties as it ranks for 'Pixel Primate' and all pages appear when doing a site: search. Also what's strange is that I set up the Google Local listing years ago but it doesn't appear anywhere in the local listing, not even when I search for it manually. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CWseo0 -
Dynamically changing a title with javascript
Hi, I asked our IT team to be able to write custom page titles in our CMS and they came up with a solution that writes the title dynamically with javascript. When I look on the page, I see the title in the browser, but when I look in the source code, I see the original page title. I am thinking that Google won't see the new javascript title, so it will not be indexed and have no impact on SEO. Am I right ?
Technical SEO | | jfmonfette0 -
New (google) local SERPs has 40 character limit on title length
Should i change my all the page titles for pages that show up in local SERPs to reflect this new limit? Is there any benefit to leaving it at the old limit and having more keywords in there? Or would there be benefit to conforming to google's new standard and having shorter titles?
Technical SEO | | A Former User0