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Hi Bruno,

Google does reserve the right to edit how page titles are displayed in search results and they are doing this more and more. In theory, they do this to actually improve user experience but because this is algorithmic, they can sometimes get it wrong or it may not look exactly how you want.

Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to stop Google from changing the title tags. I think they are less likely to change them if you have one that is well-written and relevant, but in reality, you're not going to make it relevant for every single keyword search that your site displays for.

Here is a relevant piece of info from these Google guidelines:

"If we’ve detected that a particular result has one of the above issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources. However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query. Once we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site. Users are scanning for their query terms or other signs of relevance in the results, and a title that is tailored for the query can increase the chances that they will click through."

Here are some good resources showing other examples of changing titles as they wish:

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/url-titles

http://searchengineland.com/google-title-wrong-157819

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Rob,

As the other guys have pointed out, it isn't possible to control when and how Google changes your title tag as far as I'm aware. You can try and send signals to Google such as linking to that page using specific anchor text, on-page copy etc.

I just did a few tests and the correct title tag seems to be appearing so Google may have figured it out and switched back to the correct one.

Are you still seeing them showing the wrong one? If so, could you link to a few examples of search results where this happens?

Cheers.

Paddy

I'd agree with what Ash said in that this technique isn't strictly speaking "black hat" - although the definition of black hat is open to interpretation! I checked their backlink profile on Open Site Explorer and found lots of evidence of this tactic being used lots and lots of targeting of exact match anchor text:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.6611111.com%2F

This level of exact match anchor text is probably the reason they are ranking for various keywords. However this is the type of link building that Google doesn't particularly like, at least not when it makes up the majority of your link profile. So I'd expect it to stop working for them at some point once Google figure it out properly and reduce the value of those links.

I hope that helps a bit!

Hi Troy,

I think a lot of the answer here depends on what your goals are.

If you're trying to get links into category pages by adding this type of content to them, then this is quite tough because when someone first arrives at the page, they will probably see products which can put them off linking to it. Even if you have some great content further down the page, they may not actually see it.

I do however think it is a great idea to cross link from category / product pages to genuinely good content related to those categories and products. This is good for user experience but you should probably keep an eye on conversion rates to make sure that it doesn't distract people to the point that they don't return to buy the product! Also make sure that there is a good call to action on the content pages to let people return to the category / product.

I probably wouldn't worry about duplicate content from snippets of text. If it is literally a snippet, then a link to the full page of content, I don't think that is going to cause you problems. Having said that, you should make sure that there is enough unique content on the rest of the page. With product pages, this shouldn't be a problem because you will have all the product descriptions / images / reviews etc. What I'm getting at is that if you have a page which is made up of largely snippets of content from other pages, then that isn't a signal of a quality page.

I hope that helps a bit!

Cheers.

Paddy