Google sets brand/domain name at the end of SERP titles

[rasmusbang]

Hi all,

I am experiencing that Google puts our domain name at the end of the titles in SERPs. So if ia have a title: "See our super cool website", Google would show "See our super cool website - Betxpert.com" in the SERPs

Well. This is okay. Apart from the fact that i myself often put the brand name in the title AND the fact that Google mispells the site name. The brand is BetXpert with a upper case X...so when i get a SERP with "See our super cool website - BetXpert - Betxpert.com" I am annoyed

Any one out the know how to tell Google the EXACT brand name, such that they do not set a value the site owner does not want to have?

-Rasmus

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Rasmus,

From what I can see, this only appears to affect your blog section and blog posts? Perhaps articles too?

I'm not sure what is powering your blog, but if it is Wordpress, or similar, then there is a setting where you can title your blog - this is normally your blog name and tends to get filled in when setting up and then forgotten. This problem then arises when you title a page and even though you haven't added the blog name in, it will be added automatically.

Does that make sense?

-Andy

[billhartzer]

Rasmus,

Google has been doing this (changing your title tag) for a while now. Google doesn't normally just "guess" your brand name or website name, they usually get it from somewhere. I would try to find out where they are getting it from and see if you can change it there. As Andy suggests, if it's your WordPress blog, then there is a chance that they're taking it from your blog's title, and you should be able to change it.

[rasmusbang]

Hi,

Thanks for the input. My site is not a wordpress - it is hand built PHP with hundreds of thousands of lines. I took the long way.

I will try and search for this. But it seems they have just taken domain name and set first letter upper case. One of our competitors i see has the same tendency in SERPs.

-Rasmus

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Rasmus,

DO check your blog / articles over as I see they all have the site name at the end of them. This is either being pre-filled or you have put this in yourself; I can't tell which.

If you haven't added this, then you need to see where it is being picked up from.

-Andy

[rasmusbang]

I don't see any other possibility other than Google has taken the domain name and upper cased the first letter.

I don't have this brand name any where - not on the site, in the HTML or in webmaster tools.

[Dr-Pete]

Unfortunately, there's very little you can do to stop Google from rewriting titles. In some cases, if a title is too long or poorly matches frequent queries, tweaking it can help, but that's often not the case with them adding your brand name. I'm with Bill  - I'd try to pin down if Google is pulling this from another source. If it's just coming from your domain, though, there may not be much you can do. There's no directive to tell them to stop rewriting, unfortunately.