Can anyone explain these changes to our Titles in the SERPS?

[NigelJ]

Hi there,

We've been doing well in the SERPS over the past few weeks. Our previous meta title was displayed as:

"Hunter Original Tall - Buy Original Tall Online Here"

However, recently we've seen the title in the SERP switch over to:

"Hunter Original Tall - Cloggs.co.uk"

This has occurred on several of our product pages which display a particular style of a certain brand. So for example:

"Ugg Bailey Button - Cloggs.co.uk"

Has anyone else experienced these changes or can explain why this may have happened?
There is not change to the source code and our Titles have proven to have good click through rates in the past. Any ideas mozzers?

[AnthonyMangia]

I can't be sure without digging into your site a bit, but Google has been known to use the anchor text of strong links to your website in place of your title tag, on some occasions.  This is discussed in this YOUmoz post, Distilled Stole My Page Title.

Could this be the cause?

[NigelJ]

Thanks for the reposne Anthony!

I'll look into it. But would that mean that there is a site somewhere linking to multiple pages on our site with links strong enough to overpower the Title ? it's possible just seems unlikely to be doing across so many different pages.

[AnthonyMangia]

Right that's what threw me off as well, and that's why I ruled out the possibility that it was pulling the site titles from the ODP.  Here is Google's explanation of how they choose Title/Description snippets.  I suppose they could just be pulling it from the content of the website and writing their own, but I've never really encountered that happening without it being related to an external link source.  Strange.  Hopefully another SEOmozzer can provide better insight.

[USHoleInOne]

Ive been seeing the same thing on and off, so its not just you. But I have no idea why it is happening.

[NigelJ]

I'm glad to hear it's happening else where, it doesn't appear to be negatively affecting the SERPs which is a good thing, but I'd really like to know what's causing it.

I've had a look in Webmaster tools and can see no indication there, thought there maybe something in the 'html suggestions' section.

[KeriMorgret]

Barry at Search Engine Roundtable has written about Google choosing their own page titles for your site, and I've seen reports of it here as well, so you're certainly not alone. Here's what Barry has written:

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

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-title-tag-13704.html