Big change to title tags in SERPs for me, anyone else?

[WilliamKammer]

Beginning today, when I search in incognito mode, Google is giving me extremely limited titles, and not really going off of the title tag. The results are horrible for users, and make me nervous as an SEO. Image attached below:

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[MattAntonino]

I'm not seeing that in my incognito searches at all (or in logged in searches either.)

I wouldn't worry too much about it as an SEO. As you said, it's not a really good experience. Google would want to rectify that if it was a bug - it can't be a long term feature to show worse titles & low quality results. That just doesn't make sense from their business point of view.

Odd search result though, thanks for sharing it. I'll keep my eyes out too.

[WilliamKammer]

Yeah, I figure it's a glitch, but never seen it before, and with their mobile stuff rolling out, I could see them testing title shortening tactics.

Still happening in incog every time, and never when I'm logged in.

[Dr-Pete]

I can't replicate it, but I wouldn't assume it's a glitch. Google is taking a lot more liberties with titles and snippets lately, and that's going to continue. It looks like they're going to remove display URLs (or rewrite them to paths) on mobile, and that may go to desktop, too.

In some cases, this can be a sign that Google thinks the title tag is either (a) a poor match to the query, or (b) too long or too spammy. If you're seeing title tags being rewritten frequently, you may want to revisit them in the context of that query. You can't 100% stop Google from rewriting, but there are ways not to encourage it.