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

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

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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  • Kadel
    Kadel last edited by Jun 30, 2013, 10:38 AM

    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 Aug 23, 2013, 4:18 AM Aug 23, 2013, 4:18 AM

      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
      • topic:timeago_earlier,29 days
      • Christy-Correll
        Christy-Correll Staff last edited by Jul 24, 2013, 8:26 PM Jul 24, 2013, 8:26 PM

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

        Kadel 1 Reply Last reply Aug 23, 2013, 4:18 AM Reply Quote 0
        • topic:timeago_earlier,24 days
        • FedeEinhorn
          FedeEinhorn @Kadel last edited by Jul 1, 2013, 2:11 AM Jul 1, 2013, 2:11 AM

          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 Jun 30, 2013, 11:21 PM Jun 30, 2013, 11:21 PM

            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 Jun 30, 2013, 10:45 AM Jun 30, 2013, 10:45 AM

              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 Jul 1, 2013, 2:11 AM Reply Quote 2
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