Google is changing the title

[DanielNordahl]

Hi!

Lately i have seen that Google changed the page titles for some clients, not all... its about 30% of them.

For example, the title looks likes this after the Google change:

Company name: SEO and Pay per click management

But in on that page it looks like this:

SEO and Pay per click management - Company name

Does anyone know why?

[Chenzo]

Is there a common denominator with the sites -

Wordpress - etc?

I am curious to see an example - if you could private message me - or even email me.

Your pal,

Chenzo

[LynnPatchett]

I have seen this also on a client site.

Not sure by any means, but it seems to happen when the search is for company brand + term, which i think is happening quite a lot in the market my client's site is in.

So in your case, if there are searches being done for 'Company name' + PPC Management for example, then Google seems to be switching the page title to match the search phrase.

That is what I could make out of it anyway... anyone else seeing this?

[TomRayner]

Hey Daniel

You might be interested in reading this article and this thread on Inbound.org that brought this up a couple of weeks ago.

Too early to say what the potential ramifications might be, but I would say it's a safe assumption to make that Google is focusing more on more on promoting trustworthy brands.  Bringing the brand name to the front often helps the user navigate through the SERPs, as opposed to the SEO optimised titles that we see out there.

Think we'll have to wait and see on this one, but hopefully those 2 links can help for the time being.

[LynnPatchett]

Interesting links, I hadn't seen these.

In my case the colon is not being used, although the original site title has a pipe separator in it. The page title is being displayed as the exact search phrase (which admittedly is not far off the original page title) but with rearranged wording and a couple of words left out entirely!

I'm in a non English market, not sure how that might effect the results.

[DanielNordahl]

Thanks! I will take a look at the articles.

[DanielNordahl]

Hi Vincenzo!

I just sent you some screenshots. Please take a look at them. And get back to me if you need more info.

[DanielNordahl]

Hi Lynn!

In this case im doing a search without company name, like "SEO"

[Bromtec]

I've seen the same thing on some of my sites...

This guy provides a pretty good analysis

http://socialmediatoday.com/georgestevens48/1317336/google-rewriting-page-titles-time-brand

It sounds like it's not so much about colons, but more about moving brands to the front of the title.  Only time will tell whether it's a test or a permanent change.

I also want to add that I've seen this for general searches that do not include my company name / brand.