SERP Meta Dependant Upon Search Query (strange Google bug?)
-
Hi,
I have on-page optimised a client's website
Now take a look at the Title Tag & Meta description of the front page. This is the correct updates I have made -
Title: Practice Management and Financial Consultants to the Health Industry
Description: Award winning Health and Life have been providing accounting, tax and practice management services for Medical, Dental, Allied Health businesses.Now, take a look when the business name is Googled. Notice how the Title Tag switches back to the original, yet the Description Tag is Correct.
Now, take a look when the owner's name is Googled. The Title Tag is now correct, but the description is incorrect.
- Ive set the preferred URL to be the www version
- Ive spent ages in the custom CMS trying to find what could be causing this
- The developer says it's a "Google Thing"
Anyone have any ideas?
-
You might want to also consider using the 'NOODP' and 'NOYDIR' meta tags if you have listings on Yahoo Directory and Dmoz.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35264
-
As far as I know there have been no official statement released on this topic from google. But yes google will sometimes change both title and meta description if it "feels" it's more accurate. Why? probably some spam fighting thing. But your guess is almost as good as mine to when it does this. But if you find someone who have some well documented data on the subject do keep me updated
-
The short answer is that yeah, it's a Google thing. Google has been changing titles a lot more lately, and has often tweaked the meta description. Barry has a post on it over at Search Engine Roundtable. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-title-tag-13704.html.
You don't have anything set up wrong in your CMS, it's Google. It's late, so I don't have a longer answer for you, but hopefully this will help keep you from pulling out any more hair while we wait for some more people to chime in.
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
-
Should I canonicalize URLs with no query params even though query params are always automatically appended?
There's a section of my client's website that presents quarterly government financial data. Users can filter results to see different years and quarters of financial info. If a user navigates to those pages, the URLs automatically append the latest query parameters. It's not a redirect...when I asked a developer what the mechanism was for this happening, he said "magic." He honestly didn't know how to describe it. So my question is, is it ok to canonicalize the URL without any query parameters, knowing that the user will always be served a page that does have query parameters? I need to figure out how to manage all of the various versions of these URLs.
Technical SEO | | LeahH0 -
Google Search Console "Text too small to read" Errors
What are the guidelines / best practices for clearing these errors? Google has some pretty vague documentation on how to handle this sort of error. User behavior metrics in GA are pretty much in line with desktop usage and don't show anything concerning Any input is appreciated! Thanks m3F3uOI
Technical SEO | | Digital_Reach2 -
"Cookies are required to access this site" in Google Serp?
One of my clients is having an issue where their Google search result title and description are just showing "Cookies are required to access this site." instead of the actual meta values. The problem is only in Google as Yahoo and Bing seem to be fine. You can see in the image below or by running a search your self for "be well bodyworks longmont" I've never seen anything like it and couldn't find any reference to anyone else having this issue... I would very much appreciate any insight as to what is going on. Thanks! c5PGL
Technical SEO | | CampfireDigital0 -
How do I "undo" or remove a Google Search Console change of address?
I have a client that set a change of address in Google Search Console where they informed Google that their preferred domain was a subdomain, and now they want Google to also consider their base domain (without the change of address). How do I get the change of address in Google search console removed?
Technical SEO | | KatherineWatierOng0 -
Google how deal with licensed content when this placed on vendor & client's website too. Will Google penalize the client's site for this ?
One of my client bought licensed content from top vendor of Health Industry. This same content is on the vendor's website & my client's site also but on my site there is a link back to vendor is placed which clearly tells to anyone that this is a licensed content & we bought from this vendor. My client bought paid top quality content for best source of industry but at this same this is placed on vendor's website also. Will Google penalize my client's website for this ? Niche is HEALTH
Technical SEO | | sourabhrana1 -
Google is keeping very old title tags in the SERPs for my site. How can I fix this?
Hi Around 6 months ago a site I work with changed its brand. One company became two. Despite changing the title when a new site went live around 6 months ago Google still picks up the old title for certain search results relevant to the old title. When a search result is relevant to the new title it shows that. It's very frustrating as we are trying to re-brand and do not want the old brand name showing for some very important search results. Thanks in advance for your help Paul
Technical SEO | | pauldoffman0 -
Change in how Google displays SERPs
Hi All, Recently our SERPs have changed in Google results to show product prices from our pages rather than the meta description. This just started to happen in November with no change (that we know of) on our side. I have attached a from and to SERP image if that helps. Does any one have any ideas as its starting to effect our rankings? Thanks, Tony. Tkeou,6jg6Q Tkeou,6jg6Q#1
Technical SEO | | tstauntonwri0