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.
Google automatically adding company name to serp titles
-
Maybe I've been living under a rock, but I was surprised to see that Google had algorithmically modified my page titles in the search results by adding the company name to the end of the (short) title.
<title>About Us</title> became About Us - Company Name
Interestingly, this wasn't consistent - sometimes it was "company name Limited" and sometimes just "company name.
Anyone else notice this or is this a recent change?
-
Thanks for sharing your experience!
The title tags on the site in question were being automatically generated by the content management system. Due to the particular subject matter some titles tend to be quite long so it was decided to drop the company name which was being automatically appended and is itself rather long.
Unfortunately I don't have total discretion to modify page titles as I see fit, which makes things interesting!
I'm now implementing custom <title>tags so that the company name can be appended where it needs to be, in a consistent manner and drop it from the longer titles that need to take precedence. The company name isn't added to the longer titles.</p> <p>I agree that keeping your title short and specific helps, and adding the company name can boost trust and click-through.</p> <p>I guess we all need to remember to regularly check the titles being displayed in the SERPS and to really make an effort to educate content creators about creating good titles.</p> <p>Thanks.</p></title>
-
Doug,
About 45 days ago I took advise of a user here in the forum to reduce my title tags to one target keyword phrase for each of my city pages (i have about 5000 city pages) and at the time was doing research about adding the "company name" at the end of the title tag if room permitting that it was not to long.
I targeted a lower hanging fruit than my original two keywords reduced my target keyword to one phrase and added our company brand name to the end of the title tags for every page and IMO that was the silver bullet for me along with page content improvements our traffic has increased by 40% and lead conversions have also increased on our site.
And at the time this user told me it was a good idea to add my company name to the title tags and reduce to one target keyword I was researching my competitors and a few of them where already doing this so i figured why not give it a try? It has definitely worked for us and instead of fighting for placement on page two of Google we are now for most searches on page one in the top five results for all of them!
SEO success story for sure using seo moz tools and taking some really good advice from a real expert on this forum.
Oh and also Google use to change my title tags also just as you mentioned...I can no longer find pages where Google is re writing them anymore. So I guess I did something right.
Good luck!
-
Thanks EGOL, I agree it's frustrating, especially as in this case we took the decision to remove the company name from the title...
As well as company names, and URLS/Domain do they use any other "entities?"
-
Google has been doing this for a while.
Sometimes they add your URL to the end of a title tag.
I have some title tags that are short but have my URL at the end. Google is adding my URL on top of that. Looks like this.....
Keywords at Egols.com | egols.com
Sometimes they replace your title tag with words that match the querry.
I object to this because they have overwritten a title tag that with my marketing message such as "free shipping" or a kickass price that pulls in buyers.
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.
Related Questions
-
Does Google use dateModified or date Published in its SERPs?
I was curious as to the prioritization of dateCreated / datePublished and dateModified in our microdata and how it affects google search results. I have read some entries online that say Google prioritizes dateModified in SERPs, but others that claim they prioritize datePublished or dateCreated. Do you know (or could you point me to some resources) as to whether Google uses dateModified or date Published in its SERPs? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | Parse.ly0 -
Exact Keywords Domain name
Hello everyone!, I would love to have your opinion on this matter. I am working on a company e-commerce site; these guys would like to change their domain name AND their company name, so the most logical thing that came to mind was to name the domain after the company name. However, they also bought in the past a domain that have the exact keyword they would like to rank for. I know that keywords in the URL are not as important as they used to be in the past, but nonetheless when I do a Google search for those keywords, 3 domains out of 10 on the first page are slight variations of those same keywords, meaning that they might have a really good domain name (also the other result are government, medical stuff and so on). And, no matter how many times I have read that keywords in the URL are not so important anymore, I still see a lot of sites ranking also because of their domain name (well at least outside the US) So, my question here is: would it be better for them to use the exact match keyword-domain name or should they use their company name for their new site? Or some sort combination of the two? (the keyword-domain that in some way points also to the brand domain). Thanks for your opinions on this; really appreciate it! Cheers
Algorithm Updates | | Eyah0 -
Numbers vs #'s For Blog Titles
For your blog post titles, is it "better" to use numbers or write them out? For example, 3 Things I love About People Answering My Constant Questions or Three Things I Love About People Answering My Constant Questions? I could see this being like the attorney/lawyer, ecommerce/e-commerce and therefore not a big deal. But, I also thought you should avoid using #'s in your url's. Any thoughts, Ruben
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Google sets brand/domain name at the end of SERP titles
Hi all, I am experiencing that Google puts our domain name at the end of the titles in SERPs. So if ia have a title: "See our super cool website", Google would show "See our super cool website - Betxpert.com" in the SERPs Well. This is okay. Apart from the fact that i myself often put the brand name in the title AND the fact that Google mispells the site name. The brand is BetXpert with a upper case X...so when i get a SERP with "See our super cool website - BetXpert - Betxpert.com" I am annoyed 🙂 Any one out the know how to tell Google the EXACT brand name, such that they do not set a value the site owner does not want to have? -Rasmus
Algorithm Updates | | rasmusbang0 -
Does a KML file have to be indexed by Google?
I'm currently using the Yoast Local SEO plugin for WordPress to generate my KML file which is linked to from the GeoSitemap. Check it out http://www.holycitycatering.com/sitemap_index.xml. A competitor of mine just told me that this isn't correct and that the link to the KML should be a downloadable file that's indexed in Google. This is the opposite of what Yoast is saying... "He's wrong. 🙂 And the KML isn't a file, it's being rendered. You wouldn't want it to be indexed anyway, you just want Google to find the information in there. What is the best way to create a KML? Should it be indexed?
Algorithm Updates | | projectassistant1 -
Lost 50% google traffic in one day - panic?
Hi girls + guys, a site of us were hit by a google update or a google penalty. We have lost 50% google traffic in one day (25th april, 2012). (Total visitors in average per day: 6k, yesterday: 3k) It's a german website, so I think google.de (germany) was updated. Our rankings in google.at (austria) are also affected, but it's not that bad as in google.de. We have not done any specific on page seo activities in the last two months. GWT doesn't have any message for us (no critical errors). After my first analyse I can say this: google has indexed 17k pages (thats fine) we are on 1st place with our domain name the last three days, the google traffic went up (+20%), but yesterday it was 50% below average (so -70%) last week we had a very good day, we had twice the traffic than normal, but this calmed down the following days we have lost number no. 1 places at two high traffic keywords. We had these no 1 rankings for years. We have been outranked by two of our competitors, but they have not done any onpage changes. We have lost a lot of positions at a lot of keywords. But there are also keywords which moved up. We have good content, useres are visiting 5 pages in average. No virus, no hacker (no hidden cloaking page) it's an old domain (2002) Lot of (good) inbound links Lot's of likes, g+. Good twitter activty. So, all in all I think it's more likely a ranking algo change than a penalty (a penalty for what reason?) My specific question(s): Is there any "check list" which could help me to find out the reason for this mess? What is the best strategy to regain the positions? New HTML code? New On page seo? (seomoz grades most of our important pages an A) Any idea would be appreciated! Best wishes,
Algorithm Updates | | GeorgFranz
Georg.1 -
Stars (Votes) in SERPS
Anyone seen these before? Small stars representing 'votes'? What's all this about?
Algorithm Updates | | MirandaP0 -
How long does a news article stay on Google's 'News' section on the SERP?
Our site is recognised as a news source for our niche - was just wondering if anyone had any idea how long the news story stays on the front page of the SERP once Google picks it up?
Algorithm Updates | | DanHill0