Title tag isn't displaying what i'd expect in google

[FutureM]

Hi,

I just noticed in google today that if i see my homepage in google results it had the title as "Football Goals" and that is literally it.

I changed my title tag a few weeks a go and in the page source it is still what i changed it to, but why am i seeing the title in google as the above?

It has never been my title tag, the one i changed from was only slightly different to what i changed to.

Is this a personalised result for me since it recognizes i am on the site a lot? Or is their an issue with my title tag?

 

[Faevilangel]

It's showing the same for me (never visited your website) so there are a couple of reasons for this:

- google doesn't think your title tag is relevant to the search term so is making it's own
- google has cached your old title tag and hasn't been back since you updated

If I search for "buy football goals" your title tag is showing as your "new one" so I am going to hazard a guess that google doesn't think your title tag is relevant for the search "football goals"

 

[Shopclicks]

Agree with Gareth and that's what I see here as well.

Your title tag is extremely important, so I don't understand why you would use the term 'Buy Goal Posts' in the tag when the search volume for 'goal posts' is only 2900 per month and the search volume for 'football goals' is 14800 per month. You need to use your title tag to tell Google what the page is about. Your homepage doesn't use the term 'Goal Posts' in context (page title or content) and so Google adds its own title which is relevant to the page. If you want to rank your homepage for 'football goals' use it in the page title tag (and the page title). If you leave it as it is, it's likely to slip.
You'll notice that for a 'football goals' search, that every result on page 1 uses the term 'football' & 'goal/s' in their title tag (with the exception of Argos which only uses 'football').

 

[FutureM]

Thanks for the replies. I was actually thinking i was over doing it with the Football Goals as i had it in the title, description and domain. My thinking with the Goal Posts was that the traffic may be a little better quality/relevant than simply football goals, which could have many looking for videos.

I think ill change back for now, and leave it to the seo company when we hire one.
Many Thanks!

 

[DishonestDave]

Google can also change the title tag based on the search. For my site, Google is in the habit of appending the name of my site to all titles. If I search for the name of my site it shows just the name of my site; if I search for the other words in my title it shows the full title.

 

[amvoctelemarketing]

Hey, Why don't you try re-Indexing the page If you haven't done.

 

[vanleasing]

Just because you set your title tag to specific text, Google does not need to use it if it deems other content on the page is more relevant/unique. You will find highly optimised title tags tend to get changed due to low quality websites they appear on.

Just remember your title tag is extremely important for the human eye.

 

[DhruvSoft]

Sometime it happens with many websites. This is a general problem. The possible reasons behind this may be:

1. Google does not think that your title tag is relevant according to page.

2. Google changes title tag according to relevancy of search query.

3. It might possible that your snippet is coming from open directory projects

In 1st and 2nd case we don’t have much to do with it. However if it is coming from Open Directory Projects we have one option available.

Write following meta tag to prevent this from happening:

<meta name= “robots” content=”NOODP”/>

Every webmasters do not write great Title tags. In that case Google changes it When Google changes Title tag it looks for 3 things according to query:

1. Something relatively short.

2. A good description of the page and ideally the site that the page is on.

3. That it’s somehow relevant to the query.

We cannot completely control Title Tag which could be displayed in SERP

 

[Alan]

Yep, Google was founded in 1998 that is nearly 20 years ago. In that time it is one of the richest companies in the world, so it can afford to employ the cleverest people in the world.

So if you can think you can trick it with a title tag, you may be able to, for a short while, but in general, its got you sussed.

p.s. ;pay me £99 a month and I will guarantee you that ... let me think

 

[StevePoster]

Wait for Google crawls again your website and make sure that you have the most related title to the site unless they will pick random title to present in the SERP.

 

[Sonus International]

submit your page to google or fetch it as google in webmaster, after indexing your website google will change the title. and if your title is not related as per the search tear then it will change sometimes.