Google not using <title>for SERP?</title>

[scanlin]

Today I noticed that Google is not using my title tag for one of my pages.

Search for "covered call search"

Look at organic result 6:

Search - Covered Calls

Covered call screener filters 150000 options instantly to find the best high yield covered calls that meet your custom criteria. Free newsletter.<cite>https://www.borntosell.com/**search**</cite> - CachedNow, if you click through to that page you see the meta title tag is:Covered Call ScreenerEven the cached version shows the title tag as Covered Call ScreenerI am not logged in, so I don't believe personalization has anything to do with it.Have others seen this before?It is possible that "search - covered calls" was the title tag 9 months ago (before I understood SEO); I honestly don't remember. I cleaned all my titles up at least 6 months ago.Can I force Google to re-index the page? Its content has changed a few times in the last few months, and Google crawls my site frequently according to webmaster tools.

[Getz.pro]

Hi Mike,

You are using

so that should prevent Google from taking text off your site and using it. When did you add these lines?

To get Googles attention, you can re-submit your sitemap in webmaster and increase the craw rate.

I have had Google perform very slow updates as well. Have you changed any other content on this page? If not, try updating the page copy. Give Google overwhelming reason to re-index this page.

I hope that helps

[TellThemEverything]

I don't think this answer is very clear - noodp and noydir prevent google from using the open directory and yahoo directory data for your site in SERps - they have nothing to do with the page title on your website.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35264

Sorry, don't have time right now to look at the real question - running out the door...

[Getz.pro]

Correct, this will prevent SEs from using this data in their SERPs such as title and description. Also, if there is not title, Google will use page content and generate what it thinks is best.

So to answer the question, I do not believe Google is using outside data to generate the title, but perhaps an old site title.

I hope that helps

[KeriMorgret]

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable has posts where he's seen people talking about this in the Google forums as well, so it's not just happening to you.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-title-selection-12989.html

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-titles-match-12779.html

I don't know if there is anything you can do about it, but these links should provide a little more background information and let you know you're not alone.

[scanlin]

Thanks, Keri. Great pointers. I didn't know Google had been doing 'title altering' for 6 months. Looks like they're using internal link anchor text to substitute new titles if they are related to the query. I don't really like them changing my carefully crafted titles but it's also true that I don't know if their change is helping or hurting my CTR in the SERPs. Hmmmm...