Google Rewriting PDF Titles

[waynekolenchuk]

Has anyone else noticed Google rewriting the title of PDF documents?

[RyanKent]

Google reserves the right to change titles to represent what they feel is most appropriate for the user. A pdf document online is similar to a web page in that regard.

[waynekolenchuk]

Yes, I've seen it with web pages but this is my first experience with PDF's. Anyone else seeing this?

[RyanKent]

Sure Wayne.

While there are differences between a web page and a PDF, from the concept of how Google handle's the data there is little difference. A crawler reads text and processes the data, which is then ranked and appears in search results. The same basic rules apply.

Here is an example:

• Go to the following URL: http://centerforhealthysex.com/wp-content/uploads/. You can see this site allows the contents of this folder to be displayed (not a recommended practice).

• Notice the first pdf file in the list: "alexandra-katehakis-biography.pdf"

• Go to Google.com and search for the following without quotes: ".pdf site:centerforhealthysex.com". Notice the title shows as "download bio pdf - Center for Healthy Sex".

• Return to Google.com and search for "alexandra katehakis biography". You will see the same file now has a title of "Alexandra Katehakis is a licensed Marriage, Family Therapist ..." In this case, Google grabbed the first line of text and used it as the title.

You can repeat this type of testing with almost any pdf or web page.