• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Technical SEO
        4. Why "title missing or empty" when title tag exists?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Why "title missing or empty" when title tag exists?

        Technical SEO
        3
        5
        4810
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • groovykarma
          groovykarma last edited by

          Greetings!  On Dec 1, 2011 in a SEOMoz campaign, two crawl metrics shot up from zero (Nov 17, Nov 24).

          • "Title missing or empty" was 9,676.
          • "Duplicate page content" was 9,678.

          Whoa!  Content at site has not changed.

          I checked a sample of web pages and each seems to have a proper TITLE tag.

          Page content differs as well -- albeit we list electronic part numbers of hard-to-find parts, which look similar.

          I found a similar post http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-crawl-error-title-missing-or-empty-when-there-is-already-title-and-meta-desciption-in-place .

          In answer, Sha ran Screaming Frog crawler.  I ran Frog crawler on a few hundred pages.   Titles were found and hash codes were unique.  Hmmm.

          Site with errors is http://electronics1.usbid.com

          Small sample of pages with errors:

          • electronics1.usbid.com/catalog_10.html
            electronics1.usbid.com/catalog_100.html
            electronics1.usbid.com/catalog_1000.html

          I've tried to reproduce errors yet I cannot.

          What am I missing please?

          Thanks kindly, Loren

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • groovykarma
            groovykarma @RyanKent last edited by

            Hi Ryan,

            Thank you for the reply.  Yes, content for millions of part numbers is hard to come by for one's own use.  It's proprietary for most companies.

            When we have more part information, such as a part we have sold, I have a plethora of good information on that part because we've inspected in (photos, detailed visual examination, etc).  Example: http://parts.usbid.com/SAA7115HL.html

            Yet, there are millions of parts we can sell to people that we haven't actually sold yet.  We have hundreds of vendors. We can procure parts from other sources for our customers (as well as out of our own inventory). Since we offer hard-to-find parts, businesses come to us when they cannot find it via other channels.

            How do they search?  They dump the number in Google and look for reputable sites that can provide a quote on that part (qty, manufacturer, etc).

            So, many times all I have is the part number and a list of those on the page **is not great content.  So admitted. ** It's the best I have to generate a lead.

            If you have strong thoughts on SEO attention and content for the arena in which we play, I'm all ears.  Like I mentioned to Cyrus, I am looking to work with talented people to improve content and SEO.  Whom do you recommend?

            Kindly, Loren

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • groovykarma
              groovykarma @Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

              Hi Cyrus,

              Thanks for the thoughtful reply.  On Rogerbot's challenge crawling our site and vice-versa, is there a data dump or other clues on what went wrong?  You got me halfway there identifying a crawl problem.   The next step is for me to understand/reproduce (and fix) the black box to which you refer.

              Care to use your super powers to shine a bit more light in the box for me?

              Title tags are too long.  I agree and will change.

              Also, you are perceptive and spot-on for the scalability of this content.  When I have many more attributes than part number (such as manufacturer, data code, description, photos, etc) we have those on "single part pages."  Those pages are more descriptive and "content worthy."

              The problem is that we have only so much content for part information.  If I could buy it, believe me, I'd purchase, enhance and publish that information.  (Manufacturer datasheets already exist and are for engineers more than our audience).

              Our business is to provide hard-to-find parts.  So, we need to show up in searches when purchasers dump a manufacturer part number into a search engine (yep, when it's hard to find, that's what businesses do to search).

              So, I need to scale the best I can with content of this type.  We experiment quite a bit.  If you have ideas for me or know of someone to engage for a thoughtful experiment, I am willing to engage talent to assist.

              Again, thank you.  I hope you'll give me a bit more insight into an error dump (a few lines maybe) so I can see what's up.  I will validate and clean up HTML today.

              Any follow-up thoughts?

              Kindly, Loren

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Cyrus-Shepard
                Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

                Hi Loren,

                I took a peek at your website, and checked some things behind the scenes using my super-awesome administrative powers here at SEOmoz. It looks like one of two things happened.

                1. Rogerbot encountered an error when crawling your site
                2. Your site had trouble with rogerbot.

                In either case, you probably want to contact the help team ([email protected]), especially if the problem persist in the next crawl report.

                On another note..

                Those extra-long title tags might cause some crawlers a little confusion. I'm not saying they're bad for you, but I doubt they are helping you much from a search engine point of view. Undoubtedly, I'd say with near certainty that Google is not indexing the entirety of your title tags. Paginated lists like this are tough to get indexed properly. If folks are actually searching for these obscure part numbers, perhaps this is the only way to scale it. That said, I would encourage you to experiment.

                groovykarma 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                • RyanKent
                  RyanKent last edited by

                  Hi Loren.

                  I took a look at the pages you shared. There is definitely a problem with the title. The Title field is supposed to have a maximum of 70 characters. Anything beyond that is cut off. I've seen some titles go a bit past that but your first page has a title with over 500 characters, and the second page you list has over 600 characters.

                  Another problem is the title's purpose is to let users and search engines understand the topic of the page. All of your titles begin with "Electronic Parts". Duplicating the same term at the beginning of all your titles is very bad for SEO.

                  Each page requires a unique, relevant, readable title under 70 characters.

                  Additionally, the page content is really poor. These are not indexable pages. Your pages all have the identical header, footer and sidebar which is understandable. Then you offer the exact same form at the top. After there is just a very long list of part numbers. There is no readable text, no sentences, no paragraphs, nothing to index except hundreds of part numbers.

                  Your site requires major SEO attention if you wish to be listed in search engines.

                  groovykarma 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Browse Questions

                  Explore more categories

                  • Moz Tools

                    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                  • SEO Tactics

                    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                  • Community

                    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                  • Digital Marketing

                    Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                  • Research & Trends

                    Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                  • Support

                    Connect on product support and feature requests.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • Digital_Reach

                    Google Search Console "Text too small to read" Errors

                    What are the guidelines / best practices for clearing these errors? Google has some pretty vague documentation on how to handle this sort of error. User behavior metrics in GA are pretty much in line with desktop usage and don't show anything concerning Any input is appreciated! Thanks m3F3uOI

                    Technical SEO | | Digital_Reach
                    2
                  • CREW-MARKETING

                    Quick Fix to "Duplicate page without canonical tag"?

                    When we pull up Google Search Console, in the Index Coverage section, under the category of Excluded, there is a sub-category called ‘Duplicate page without canonical tag’.  The majority of the 665 pages in that section are from a test environment. If we were to include in the robots.txt file, a wildcard to cover every URL that started with the particular root URL ("www.domain.com/host/"), could we eliminate the majority of these errors? That solution is not one of the 5 or 6 recommended solutions that the Google Search Console Help section text suggests.  It seems like a simple effective solution.  Are we missing something?

                    Technical SEO | | CREW-MARKETING
                    1
                  • trigaudias

                    Google is shortening many of my title tags although they are already quite concise

                    Hi, Title tags of our website are being truncated by Google even though they can be very short (sometimes < 40 characters) and with very few capital letters. We would like to understand why. Example: Principal component analysis (pca) in abcde - OurBrand shows up as: Principal component analysis (pca) in abcd... - OurBrand where abcde is the name of a very common software (5 characters), and OurBrand is a 6 characters long string (could be used in either lower case or upper case). Even when removing the brackets around pca, truncation still occurs... Any clue why?

                    Technical SEO | | trigaudias
                    1
                  • ChristianRubio

                    Title Tag vs. H1 / H2

                    OK, Title tag, no problem, it's the SEO juice, appears on SERP, etc.  Got it. But I'm reading up on H1 and getting conflicting bits of information ... Only use H1 once? H1 is crucial for SERP Use H1s for subheads Google almost never looks past H2 for relevance So say I've got a blog post with three sections ... do I use H1 three times (or does Google think you're playing them ...) Or do I create a "big" H1 subhead and then use H2s? Or just use all H2s because H1s are scary?  🙂 I frequently use subheads, it would seem weird to me to have one a font size bigger than another, but of course I can adjust that in settings ... Thoughts? Lisa

                    Technical SEO | | ChristianRubio
                    0
                  • franchisesolutions

                    What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?

                    I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!

                    Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions
                    1
                  • 678648631264

                    How do I fix the h1 tag?

                    No More Than One H1 Tag Easy fix <dl> <dt>Number of H1s</dt> <dd>2</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Best practices for both SEO and accessibility require only a single H1 tag. The H1 is meant to be the page's headline, and thus, multiple H1s are confusing. Consider employing H2, H3 or CSS styles to achieve the same results with text visualization.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove multiple instances of the H1 tag, so that only one exists on the page.</dd> <dd>I get this error yet it does not tell me how to fix it. I'm not even sure what the H1 tag is?
                    </dd> </dl>

                    Technical SEO | | 678648631264
                    0
                  • slangdon

                    Google is Showing Website as "Untitled"

                    My freelance designer made some changes to my website and all of a sudden my homepage was showing the title I have in Dmoz. We thought maybe the NOODP tag was not correct, so we edited that a little and now the site is showing as "Untitled". The website is http://www.chemistrystore.com/. Of course he didn't save an old copy that we can revert to. That is a practice that will end. I have no idea why the title and description that we have set for the homepage is not showing in google when it previously was. Another weird thing that I noticed is that when I do ( site:chemistrystore.com ) in Google I get the https version of the site showing with the correct title and description. When I do ( site:www.chemistrystore.com ) in Google I don't have the hompage showing up from what I can tell, but there are 4,000+ pages to the site. My guess is that if it is showing up, it is showing up as "Untitled". My question is.... How can we get Google to start displaying the proper title and description again?

                    Technical SEO | | slangdon
                    0
                  • tdsnet

                    301 for "index.php" in Web.config?

                    Hi there, I'm trying to create a 301 redirect for the file "index.php" but I keep getting a "fail to redirect" message in Firefox whenever I insert it into the Web.config file. <location path="index.php"></location> Is there anyway around this? Thanks for any help According to Open Site Explorer, there are about 500 links to my index file but it only has a 302 status so will not be passing link juice.

                    Technical SEO | | tdsnet
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.