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Google Changing Titles in Results  (View post)

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

Thursday, July 16, 2009
14 years ago5,604 views

If you search for [nesbearings], Google shows the proper title. Interesting dynamic title adjusting.

Omid A. [PersonRank 0]

14 years ago #

Probably the website itself is adjusting the title according to the user agent.

François Houste [PersonRank 1]

14 years ago #

Isn't it possible that this Title comes from ODP when juged most relevant by Google, as it sometimes does with Description snippet. As ODP entry title for NESBearings is "Napoleon Engineering Services" (http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=nesbearings)...

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

Other examples:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Abbott+Ball+Company
http://www.google.com/search?q=kansara+group
http://www.google.com/search?q=waddleton

(the titles used by Google are the same titles from the Open Directory)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

> Probably the website itself is adjusting the title according
> to the user agent.

Omid, no, the Google cache also shows the different title... if Google would have seen something different than it would also be in the Google cache, right?

> Isn't it possible that this Title comes from ODP when
> juged most relevant by Google, as it sometimes does
> with Description snippet.

Right, could also be...

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

> Other examples:
> google.com/search?q=Abbott+Bal ...
> google.com/search?q=kansara+gr ...

The original title of the last one is really over-optimized/ spammy, and might be a good example of why Google is doing this:

<TITLE>Industrial Bearings Manufacturer,Ball Bearing Exporters,Linear Bearings,Roller Bearings,Stainless Steel Ball Bearings,Flanged Ball Bearing,Ball Bearings Manufacturers Exporters ImportersAutomotive Bearing Exporters,Wholesale Industrial Bearings,Automotive Bearing Wholesale,India</TITLE>

JohnMu [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

Hi guys
We may choose to replace titles which are repeated on a number of pages or which otherwise appear to be suboptimal – that's probably what's happening here. To resolve that, it would be a good idea to make sure that the titles are unique, compelling and relevant to every page and that the important parts are visible in the first part of the title text. You can get some help with finding duplicated titles in Webmaster Tools under Diagnostics / HTML suggestions.

If you have any questions regarding this, it's generally a good idea to pop in to our webmaster help forum and ping us there :).

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

[Added an update, thanks!]

John Carcutt [PersonRank 1]

14 years ago #

This has been happening for a while now with company names. It started about the same time Big G made an algo adjustment targeting brands.

Usually only seen when the search query contains brand related terms. Same page will show the Title Tag text for a non-brand related search and Company Name for a brand related searches.

Notice this search for the first example used above:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aabbottball.com+Ball+Bearings

It shows the true Title Text due to the non-brand nature of the search.

Barry Schwartz [PersonRank 4]

14 years ago #

But in Mike's case it seems to be an ODP thing. In the Blinds.com case (noted at http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/020408.html) it might be Google Maps related?

So John, you are confirming Google may use Google Maps data for titles in web search?

John Carcutt [PersonRank 1]

14 years ago #

I did read that article Barry, but the cases I have studied include brands with multiple locations and the titles on Maps are usually not all the same. So I cant confirm, but do agree this is probably the case. And I am working to get these titles to match and will report if it makes a difference.

I have seen one example of multiple locations which do all have the same Maps title and it matches the Brand based search result Title. Others with many versions on their local listings are hit and miss for the Brand based Title change in the listing.

My recommendation is if you are interested in this for your brand and you have multiple locations, make sure they all have the same Brand based Title if possible in Maps.

Barry Schwartz [PersonRank 4]

14 years ago #

It seemed like in my case it was a robots.txt issue...

Jill Whalen [PersonRank 1]

14 years ago #

Always use the "NOODP" and "NOYDIR" robots attributes to avoid them using your dmoz/odp and yahoo titles or descriptions. This has been around for quite a few years now.

Dan Tobias [PersonRank 6]

14 years ago #

Lots of sites use really ridiculous titles. There are the excessively "keyword stuffed" ones as noted above, and there are also acts of total idiocy like pages with no title at all or even "Untitled Document" as their title. People also tend to mindlessly repeat titles in multiple pages instead of using sensible titles for each page.

Rhoda Ozen [PersonRank 0]

14 years ago #

I'm quite sure Google must offer it's employees total geekdom run amok because regardless I've never, except the old school "The Google" search, found an iota of help when in my fifties new to Blogging new to CSS, HTML, so much and nary an employee ever aided me. My Blog was down more than up. Nobody in 19 months answered an email, answered a question in humane human speak. So I split, now at WordPress.org and .us and .com. I bought those horribly egregious G1 phones, malicious apps run roughshod destroying articles i'd written. By use of your silly calendar on Google and the G1 a Psychotic freak cyberterrorist whom I took issue with their dispassionate gramatically incorrect wee story, ergo he threatened my daughters. He hacked by use of the calendars and he got into my four non-profit blogs and wreaked hell, uses 3 other gmail names posing as myself. Filth! Flaunts his PHD, uh huh he's an intern at propublica.org whom claims to be a Vet yet one year after the blowout over Veterans Suicides he writes an article factually garbage!

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