Can anyone explain these changes to our Titles in the SERPS?
-
Hi there,
We've been doing well in the SERPS over the past few weeks. Our previous meta title was displayed as:
"Hunter Original Tall - Buy Original Tall Online Here"
However, recently we've seen the title in the SERP switch over to:
"Hunter Original Tall - Cloggs.co.uk"
This has occurred on several of our product pages which display a particular style of a certain brand. So for example:
"Ugg Bailey Button - Cloggs.co.uk"
Has anyone else experienced these changes or can explain why this may have happened?
There is not change to the source code and our Titles have proven to have good click through rates in the past. Any ideas mozzers? -
Barry at Search Engine Roundtable has written about Google choosing their own page titles for your site, and I've seen reports of it here as well, so you're certainly not alone. Here's what Barry has written:
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-title-selection-12989.html
-
I'm glad to hear it's happening else where, it doesn't appear to be negatively affecting the SERPs which is a good thing, but I'd really like to know what's causing it.
I've had a look in Webmaster tools and can see no indication there, thought there maybe something in the 'html suggestions' section.
-
Ive been seeing the same thing on and off, so its not just you. But I have no idea why it is happening.
-
Right that's what threw me off as well, and that's why I ruled out the possibility that it was pulling the site titles from the ODP. Here is Google's explanation of how they choose Title/Description snippets. I suppose they could just be pulling it from the content of the website and writing their own, but I've never really encountered that happening without it being related to an external link source. Strange. Hopefully another SEOmozzer can provide better insight.
-
Thanks for the reposne Anthony!
I'll look into it. But would that mean that there is a site somewhere linking to multiple pages on our site with links strong enough to overpower the Title ? it's possible just seems unlikely to be doing across so many different pages.
-
I can't be sure without digging into your site a bit, but Google has been known to use the anchor text of strong links to your website in place of your title tag, on some occasions. This is discussed in this YOUmoz post, Distilled Stole My Page Title.
Could this be the cause?
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
-
Where can I find a list of CTRs by search engine position, beyond the top 20?
I'm trying to find a comprehensive list of CTRs by search enginge position. The most exhaustive list I've found is this one: https://www.advancedwebranking.com/cloud/ctrstudy/ - which shows CTRs by industry for the positions 1-21. I'm interested in seeing the rates for lower positions as well - does anyone in the community know any (preferably recent) resources for this? Thank you.
Algorithm Updates | | PrebenKaas0 -
Can we add header tags followed by header tags without text in-between? Best practice?
Hi all, I need clarification on this. We are adding new pages where H2 is followed by few bold bullet point headings with plain text description under each bullet point. I am just wondering whether we can given these bold bullet points as H3 tags as just leave as text. In the below example, can "**Good for website" **and "**Good for visitors" **be H3 tags or not? Benefits of SEO (H2) Good for website: Followed for best practices to show in search results Good for visitors: Will give better user experience. Number of H3 tags followed by a H2 is fine? In fact header tags followed by any header tag if Okay without plain text in-between? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Any important change in SERPs between Nov 17th and Nov 20th?
I've noticed important changes in visibility for some websites, between Nov 17th and Nov 20th. Also some of the webs that monitor SERPs have detected similar stuff (Including Mozcast). Do you know if an important change in SERPs took place during those days?
Algorithm Updates | | emerlo0 -
Pages fluctuating +/- 70 positions in Google SERPs?
I've got some pages that appear somewhere around #25 in Google. Every now and then, it just goes away from the top 100 results for a few days (even up to a week) and then it comes back. I've got other pages that rank around #8 which falls down to about #75 for a while and then it comes back. But while a page may be gone from the top 100 results in the US, it still ranks at about the same place everywhere else in the world (+/- 10 positions). I've seen this happen in the past but never it happened so often. What gives?!?
Algorithm Updates | | sbrault740 -
Site refuses to improve rankings. Can someone else put a set of eyes on this for me and see what I am missing?
Hello! We've been successful with over 40 clients and getting them to great results in our industry, insurance. We recently acquired a new client who had an existing website with prior SEO results a very spammy blog and many spammy links. We've removed many of the blog articles and links using the Google Disavow Tool We've been monitoring this site in a campaign on Moz, but we're seeing zero improvement week to week. Can someone put another set of eyes on this and see if we're simply just missing something? Results for all 30 of our tracked keywords, zero are in the top 50! I would guess this was an algorithm penalty, but it has been 3 months now since we've made the changes and nothing is changing... not even a little bit! Any help/suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you and enjoy Labor Day weekend!
Algorithm Updates | | Tosten0 -
Does this mean that exact keyword phrase anchor text is not the dominating ranking factor anymore for serps?http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/ten-recent-algorithm-changes.html
Does this mean that exact keyword phrase anchor text is not the dominating ranking factor anymore for serps? http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/ten-recent-algorithm-changes.html If so what is the new most important factor?
Algorithm Updates | | AndrewSEO0 -
Rankings changing based on location within a country... normal?
I recently had a satellite office across the country come to me and say that they couldn't find us on Google, based on a number of keywords they were searching on. I thought that isn't right... I know we rank for those terms. So, I did a search here, and there we were for those very terms, and ranking quite nicely. Sooo, what's going on there? I know there are variations from Google.com to Google.ca in terms of ranking. But within Google.ca I've not seen this before. Can anyone shed some light on that?
Algorithm Updates | | atcosl0 -
How long does a news article stay on Google's 'News' section on the SERP?
Our site is recognised as a news source for our niche - was just wondering if anyone had any idea how long the news story stays on the front page of the SERP once Google picks it up?
Algorithm Updates | | DanHill0