How? Title in Google differs than actual title tag

[NicB1]

Just curious on how sites do this? If you search for a video (perhaps Green Lantern Trailer), you'll see the YouTube results in Google/Bing listed as

YouTube - ‪Green Lantern Trailer

but when you go to the page, the actual title tag displayed is

‪Green Lantern Trailer - YouTube

I've seen other sites do this too.  I'm just curious what they are doing (I don't see any other title tags in the html)?  I thought your title tag is what is displayed in SERP?

Thanks,

[malachiii]

Seeing as youtube is a google property they can do what they want  additionally, google has been known to change title tags in their SERPs from time to time and lately they've been doing it more.  here is some more information directly from google -

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=679eb9f272a5a3bf&hl=en

[RyanKent]

I cannot duplicate your result. All the youtube results in Google SERP for "YouTube - ‪Green Lantern Trailer" appear as Green Lantern Trailer - YouTube. When I visit the page, the title is the same.

Can you offer an exact keyword search along with the result page where the title does not match SERPs?

[EGOL]

Google is changing lots of title tags these days - to titles that they feel will better please the searcher.

For example... go to google.com and search for "lamps"..... check what is displayed for JC Penny... then go into the site and see their actual title tag is entirely different.

[RyanKent]

That is especially interesting considering the term "lamps" by itself is never used once on the page. "Table Lamps" is used frequently but they somehow managed to isolate "lamps" by itself and use it.

I checked OSE just in case there were many links using "lamps" as anchor text but no links are visible for the page.

I really question how that was done and in this circumstance, why it was done.

[Thos003]

Per James Zolman... "when it's robots txt'd out: http://jcp.is/ppWTXU - G assume title via external link anchor txt imo".

[RyanKent]

Thomas, I checked the page with OSE and saw no links at all. It's possible Google sees links not captured by OSE but that means they are newer or weaker links. It seems unlikely but possible. Even so, very odd they would change a page's title in SERPs based on the anchor text of weak links.

[EGOL]

I believe that Google is matching the query.

[RyanKent]

Wow! That is rather nice of them. Where do I sign up for that program?

[EGOL]

Search for "dresses" and check title tags for JCP and cache.com (both on page 2).

[Thos003]

I am with you on that one.

[Thos003]

well if you get dumped by Twitter then pick up on JCPenny!

It's pretty amazing that this page is ranking at all.

[Thos003]

Perhaps its some SEO testing.

"Let's create a new page, use a robot txt file to block the bot, and then spam a 100k new links to page."

"That's crazy enough that it just might work."