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.
Author Byline in Page Title in SERP
-
I was exploring my company's visibility in Google News results, and I noticed the author byline in a recently published article was being pulled into the page title in the SERP. See the attached image for a screenshot. It makes it sound awkward: "How to Find the Best Cannabis Experience and High for You Patrick..." - as if we're explaining it to some guy named Patrick?
We have the byline the same way in all other posts, but this is the first I've seen this happen. Has anyone seen/had this happen, and if so, have any ways to prevent it?
Thanks in advance for any insights!
Here's the post URL: https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/how-to-find-best-cannabis-experience-high
-
Well, My thinking is that for whatever reason Google thinks that the title has to be longer than suggested by that plugin and for whatever reason is pulling the authors name. The only way I see something changing is too make title longer or remove/rename author.
-
Interesting, I never really considered Sailthru - which we use for a variety of functionality and CRM - to impact how the pages show up in SERPs. I did a search in Google News for "leafly cannabis" and I'm still finding this page to be the only one showing up with the name being pulled into the SERP title. It won't let me post this as an image attachment for some reason, but here's a screenshot of the first page, which also includes shorter titles that aren't having this issue (http://imgur.com/a/pGhdZ). I've looked at this specific page up and down and can't really find any other reason than that for the issue.
Thanks for taking a look!
-
Ok, Now I see it. I didn't understand you were searching in News section. And here is the reason why it comes up like that - you are using some type of plugin called "Sailthru Horizon" and you have a title setup there as "How to Find the Best Cannabis Experience and High for You" and author specified as Patrick Bennett. It's very typical for google to pull such info for News section. Basically it's like twitter card. So, try changing the title to longer one.
-
Thank you for your response!
I'm using anything from "how to find best high," "best hight," and anything else I can think of that triggers it in the News results. And it's still showing up with "Patrick" in the title for all of them. I've also tested in Chrome Incognito mode, Safari private browser, and just a Google search on my logged in Chrome browser.
It's definitely keeping me stumped >__<
-
Howdy.
For me tit comes up without Patrick, like this: "How to Find the Best Cannabis Experience and High for You | Leafly", which matches your page title.
The titles displayed in search are created automatically based on query. The only way to influence it is to have explicitly set <title>tag, which you do. So, if it still shows up with patrick to you, try different browser, in incognito mode. See if it's the same. if it is - post the query you are searching.</p></title>
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
What are best page titles for sub-domain pages?
Hi Moz communtity, Let's say a website has multiple sub-domains with hundreds and thousands of pages. Generally we will be mentioning "primary keyword & "brand name" on every page of website. Can we do same on all pages of sub-domains to increase the authority of website for this primary keyword in Google? Or it gonna end up as negative impact if Google consider as duplicate content being mentioned same keyword and brand name on every page even on website and all pages of sub domains? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Why does Google rank a product page rather than a category page?
Hi, everybody In the Moz ranking tool for one of our client's (the client sells sport equipment) account, there is a trend where more and more of their landing pages are product pages instead of category pages. The optimal landing page for the term "sleeping bag" is of course the sleeping bag category page, but Google is sending them to a product page for a specific sleeping bag.. What could be the critical factors that makes the product page more relevant than the category page as the landing page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo0 -
Date of page first indexed or age of a page?
Hi does anyone know any ways, tools to find when a page was first indexed/cached by Google? I remember a while back, around 2009 i had a firefox plugin which could check this, and gave you a exact date. Maybe this has changed since. I don't remember the plugin. Or any recommendations on finding the age of a page (not domain) for a website? This is for competitor research not my own website. Cheers, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
Is a different location in page title, h1 title, and meta description enough to avoid Duplicate Content concern?
I have a dynamic website which will have location-based internal pages that will have a <title>and <h1> title, and meta description tag that will include the subregion of a city. Each page also will have an 'info' section describing the generic product/service offered which will also include the name of the subregion. The 'specific product/service content will be dynamic but in some cases will be almost identical--ie subregion A may sometimes have the same specific content result as subregion B. Will the difference of just the location put in each of the above tags be enough for me to avoid a Duplicate Content concern?</p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | couponguy0 -
Effect of Removing Footer Links In all Pages Except Home Page
Dear MOZ Community: In an effort to improve the user interface of our business website (a New York CIty commercial real estate agency) my designer eliminated a standardized footer containing links to about 20 pages. The new design maintains this footer on the home page, but all other pages (about 600 eliminate the footer). The new design does a very good job eliminating non essential items. Most of the changes remove or reduce the size of unnecessary design elements. The footer removal is the only change really effect the link structure. The new design is not launched yet. Hoping to receive some good advice from the MOZ community before proceeding My concern is that removing these links could have an adverse or unpredictable effect on ranking. Last Summer we launched a completely redesigned version of the site and our ranking collapsed for 3 months. However unlike the previous upgrade this modifications does not URL names, tags, text or any major element. Only major change is the footer removal. Some of the footer pages provide good (not critical) info for visitors. Note the footer will still appear on the home page but will be removed on the interior pages. Are we risking any detrimental ranking effect by removing this footer? Can we compensate by adding text links to these pages if the links from the footer are removed? Seems irregular to have a home page footer but no footer on the other pages. Are we inviting any downgrade, penalty, adverse SEO effect by implementing this? I very much like the new design but do not want to risk a fall in rank and traffic. Thanks for your input!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
How to clean up a SERP?
I have a new customer and he wants me to clear up the SERP for his branded keyword, the SERP currently has his site and two other sites related to him under his result... Under that is bad reviews and old reports. My client does own the top spot (#1) for his branded name. My client has a: linkedin facebook twitter myspace I was thinking to push all these to the first page, this will clear up some of those bad reviews. What are your thoughts? Have any of you ever had this type of case? I need to get 6 different sites to all rank for the same exact key term, however I have the top spot to link from...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0