Page Title Displaying differently on Google

[andrewlos]

Thanks for looking.

Sorry, i dont understand.... If the page title is " Camera Filters - Digital Camera Gear"

Then why is google displaying "our range of Camera Filters"??

It should be displaying the title tag.

[Eslam-yosef]

I do remember that Matt cuts said something about using criteria to change a web page title. When your title doesn't meet that criteria, Google will change your title.

Here're most important criterias:

• Short enough.
• Relevant to the query.
• describe what in the page and the site.

So, Google finds it more relevant to change your title.

Eslam

[andrewlos]

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

I am not 100% convinced about this as Camera Filters would be the most relevant page title, not "our range of Camera Filters" with "our" not being capitalised either.

[Linda-Vassily]

What Google will show in the search results is partly based on what the person searched for. What was your search? (I see, based on the bolding, that it included camera and filters--were there any other terms?)

Also, what happens if you do an anonymous search?  If you are logged in, you might be seeing things based on your history.

Here is a link with information from Google that might help.

[andrewlos]

Hi Linda the search was Camera Filters

I am unsure how do do an anonymous search???

[Linda-Vassily]

Both Chrome and Firefox have incognito/private windows as a menu choice. A global way to do non-personalized search is to append ?pws=0 after the Google query URL. (And definitely be sure you are not logged in to your browser.)

[MoosaHemani]

Usually when Google updates the title on its own it’s because the title is not optimized or too general against the desired query. The best idea is to redevelop your title and see if it works out for you!

Hope this helps!

[Mark_Ginsberg]

Two things:

1. if you search for "site:digitalcameragear.com.au", you'll see the title as you entered it for the camera filters page.  Not sure why it's showing up differently for your search.  At first, I thought it was taking some content from the page, but the word "range" doesn't appear on the page anywhere.  Very strange.  As others said, perhaps in an incognito window it shows up normally.

2. Totally unrelated: the site seems to have issues with duplicate content on http://www.digitalcameragear.com.au/ and http://digitalcameragear.com.au/ (without www).  There are no canonical tags, so you should either add canonical tags or redirect one version to the corresponding version across the site.

[andrewlos]

Thanks Mark. Turns out it was "user error" All appears fine in an anonymous search.

Thanks for bring up point 2. Is this really a issue as i would have assumed in google webmaster, google would have been "notified" about this. I have done a quick search on this though and cant seem to find to much info. Any idea on how to implement on a Joomla site?

Cheers

Andrew

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi Andrew,

Wow, this is an interesting find! Not something I've heard of before.

Like others have said, Google has recently started to take it upon themselves to rewrite your page title if they feel it's not descriptive enough. Linda shared a link that went over their official guidelines above.

Mmy theory is that "Camera Filters - Digital Camera Gear" isn't descriptive enough to Google (possibly because your brand name looks like a product category, which it may not like in the page title), so it's searching your site for more information about camera filters. I wasn't able to do a full crawl of your site, but I was able to find a few links to the Camera Filters page in Google's index:

• 8% OFF ALL Camera Filters during the 8th Month (which is now redirecting home, but Google still has it in its index): "Click here for our range of Camera Filters."
• Camera Filters - Which one... (which Google also has indexed separately in the blog pagination 2 - Digital Camera Gear "To view our range of filters, please click HERE."

My theory is that Google has an algorithm that identifies low quality page titles and tries to replace them cleverly, but it doesn't have enough information to do that well in your case. To test this out, try writing a more robust <title>like:</p> <p><strong>Camera Filters - UV, Polarisers & More - Digital Camera Gear</strong></p> <p>My guess is, Google will like this better and stick with your page title.</p> <p>Let us know how this goes!</p> <p>Kristina</p></title>

[KristinaKledzik]

I've actually run into 1) a lot. When you search for site: you get the raw index data, not what Google will show in live SERPs. This is a problem for rich snippet text as well; when Google can read your rich snippets but chooses not to show your mark ups, the mark ups will show up in site: but not in any other searches.

I was able to find the "our range" version when I was searching just now, so this is still a problem, I'm afraid. I've given you my opinion in more detail below.