My Site name changed. Why does sometimes new name, sometimes old name show in Google.

[DanielleNZ]

My website name has changed in the title, but only shows up sometimes in the SERPs. What can I do to ensure the new name is the name that always shows up?

It's been a month since the change and we have submitted a new sitemap.

Here's one example: http://www.building.govt.nz/blc-building-act. In Google (for New Zealand building code) it shows up as Building Act - Department of Building and Housing.

Any ideas?

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

You're at the mercy of Google for the moment. According to Google:

"If we’ve detected that a particular result has one of the above issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources. However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query. Once we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site. Users are scanning for their query terms or other signs of relevance in the results, and a title that is tailored for the query can increase the chances that they will click through."
Have you looked into the Fetch as Google tool? You can submit your page(s) through that tool and submit them to the engine. Other than that, you're on Google's timeline, so I suggest hanging tight and waiting it out until the change sticks permanently. You've really done everything that you can, just be patient.

Hope this helps! Good luck!