Google shortens title tag for certain keywords

[jasonwdexter]

A friend of mine runs a website over at http://www.web-design-herefordshire.co.uk/

The keywords he is targeting  web design hereford and web design herefordshire.

When you search these terms (he's found on page 3 on google.co.uk) his title tag is shortened to web design hereford,

Does google shorten these when the keyword being searched is the keyword in the domain? I've seen it on a few others.

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Jason

This has happened for a while but it has ramped up a bit recently. As I understand it, Google thinks it can show a better title tag, as in, more relevant to the users search query and more likely to be clicked than the one the site uses.

So, if the user searches for:

Web Design Hereford

Then, the user is more likely to click on a SERP link with a title of

Web Design Hereford

Than say

Web Design Hereford - Freelance Web Designer Hereford | RJG Design

Really, this one is a smallish change, but I have seen almost complete rewrites of titles and often will see it related to navigational searches (for a specific site).

Few interesting links on this~:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/0UuCLuncO_Q/discussion

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php/topic/47115-google-changing-title-tags/

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-title-tag-issue-15402.html

Ultimately, they should only choose a relevant tag and one that is more likely to win a click so this is not really anything you need to worry about.

Hope this helps!
Marcus

[jasonwdexter]

Thanks for the reply!

I've seen this sort of a thing for a while but it's never been something that has bothered me as it hasn't affected my clients CTR but he sent me an email the other day about it and I have to say that it initially stumped me!

Great links though and I'll pass them on to him

[MarkHodson]

also, Google will sometimes replace a homepage title that is full of keywords with the brand name. This is usually fixed when you put your brand name back into the homepage title