Title tag not changing in Google. Can somebody take a look for me?

[leopold4952]

I'm using Yoast SEO plugin for the website. The website is http://www.emerypharmaservices.com. It appears on the webpage, the title tag is correct (home page should be Contract Laboratory Research Services for Analytical Chemistry and Microbiology), however, in Google it only says Emeryville Pharmaceutical Services. Could this be due to my settings? Please advise.

Thank you

[danatanseo]

Hi Andy,

I believe the problem is that your title tag is too long. Google can only display about 70 characters maximum for a title and yours is 79 characters long. Count includes spaces and punctuation too. Make a title that fits within that limitation and Google should display it.

Dana

[edwardrj]

Yes, the tag is a little too long, but how long ago did you change it? It takes some time for Google to update the indexed page titles -- if you've changed it in the last week it probably just hasn't been re-crawled and updated yet.

[mattbeswick]

Hi Andy,

This is a fun one! I've checked, and the latest version of the site that Google has cached contains the new <title>, so for some reason it either hasn't update yet or is choosing to ignore the tag. If that's happening, it could be for a few reasons:</p> <ul style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> <li><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">There's an OpenGraph tag as follows: <span><meta </span><span>property</span><span>='</span><span>og:site_name</span><span>' </span><span>content</span><span>='</span><span>Emeryville Pharmaceutical Services</span><span>'/>. It might be that Google's using that because it doesn't see your title tag as being relevant. If that's the case it's a completely new one on me as I've never seen this happen before.</span></span></li> <li><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span>More likely is that it's a relevancy / length issue, causing one of these to happen: <a href="http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/url-titles">http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/url-titles</a></span></span></li> </ul> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">Looking at your backlink profile and page content, there's nowhere that matches your chosen title so this is the most likely reason. You could try shortening the tag or tweaking your content but, to be honest, why would you want to? The branded title looks far nicer on the SERPs...</span></p> <p><em><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">Matt</span></em></p></title>

[leopold4952]

Hi Matt,

Thank you for your help. The branded title does look nice, but isn't it important if I wanted to rank for those specific keywords that they are included in the title tag?

[danatanseo]

Excellent and thorough answer Matt.