Old brand name being suffixed on Google SERP listings

[seoelevated]

At the end of some of our listings in Google search results pages, our old brand name is being suffixed even though it is not in our title tags.

For context, we re-branded several months ago, and at that time also migrated to a new domain name. Our title tags have our current brand name suffixed, like "Shop Example Category | Example".

In the Google search results, but not in Bing nor Yahoo, about half of our pages have titles whcih instead look like this: "Shop Example Category | Example - oldBrandName".

The "dash" and the old brand name are not in our title tags, but they are being appended, even when our title tags are fairly long. For example, even with titles at 54 characters (421 pixels), the suffix is being appended. BUT, not with our longer title tags.

We are actually OK with the brand name being appended if our title tags are on the shorter side, but would prefer that our current brand name be appended instead of the older one.

I realize we could increase the length of all our title tags, and perhaps we may go that route. But, does anyone know where Google would be getting the old brand name to append onto the URLs? We've checked and it is not in our page source (the old brand name is used in our page source in some areas of text and some url paths, but not in any kind of meta tag).

Per Google's guidance (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-do-not-put-organization-schema-markup-on-every-page/289981/) we only have schema for the "Organization" on our home page, and not on every page. So, assuming this advice is correct to not add schema to every page, how can we inform Google of our current brand name so that it stops appending our old brand name on pages?

[RossKernez]

Hi there,

I have a similar problem with my title tag. Google appended ":" to my title, but I do not even have that sign in my title. I do not have any schema markup on that site at all, so I do not think it has something to do with Schema Mark-Up. I tried to reindex and change the title, of that page but ":" does not go anywhere.  Btw when you have rebranded the website? It is possible that Google needs more time to update the databases.

Ross

[seoelevated]

Ross, we completed the rebrand and domain migration in February (so, about 6 months ago). All of the pages to which I'm referring have been re-indexed and the cached version is in the past 60 days. The page title shown in the SERPs is our new page title, on all of these, just suffixed with our old brand name. So, Google has had time to update all our titles and descriptions. But for whatever reason is appending an old brand name, and I don't know where it is getting that from, nor the dash and spaces that it is including with those (interesting that in your case it is appending a colon).

[RossKernez]

Hi again,

I would reach out directly to Jonh Muller or Gary Illes via twitter directly. I know some people got their things solved pretty fast with their help.

Ross

[ewr434ayman23]

Hey Nice Question,

This Will automatically fix after maybe 3-4 weeks. My One Got fixed real quick.

[seoelevated]

Glad to hear. Hopefully mine will too, but it's been 6 months already and still showing the old brand name as a suffix.

[Guest]

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