I just noticed that the serps for Google are showing an old title of my page, from way back, I can't remember the last time I only used the company name. Cache is the same, May 25. Correct title. Hmmm...
NetMidWest, I don't suppose this is the title you used for your submission to DMOZ? It's probably a stupid question.. but I have noticed that G are playing around with the title and meta description tags bringing this from the Google Directory. Just a thought.
Good catch wwhhomes. I looked up another host in the DMOZ that has likely been affected by the 302 redirect bug, same as me, and they are being shown by the anchor in the DMOZ as well. Search on netmidwest and aqhost to see them. Definitely related to fixing the 302 bug, I would say. The fact that it did not appear until after PageRank got grayed only adds to my theory that Google is fixing the bug this weekend. I wonder what it will do to my serps in the long run. Hurt my rankings, I would speculate. Now, why would you suppose that this was moved to website reviews, since this is about Google serps showing a different title, with a correct title in a recent cache? By doing so, I missed the reply you made. In fact, I was a little tired when I posted, and forgot about it.
If you mention a web site in regard to Google Shawn will always move the thread to "Website Review". It doesn't make a lot of sense to me and some of us have argued with him about it. But its his forum and that is one of the few arbitary decisions he seem to enforce. However if there ever was a thread that deserved to be in the Google forum this one would be it I agree.
Likewise ran across this issue in another forum someplace recently, although I don't recall where. Same conclusion was drawn, that the title and description were old copy derived from DMOZ. I don't suppose by chance you checked the cached page to see what it showed? Have seen instances of Cache Page reverting as well and in fact found thread concerning such on the McDar Forum. http://forums.mcdar.net/viewtopic.php?t=78 That may be something else to watch if in fact it has. Would have given you live link, but the forum hasn't figured out I've got more than 10 posts!! You'll have to cut and paste... (o;?
I just wish this would go away: http ://64.233.161.104 /search?hl=en&q=cache:web-hosting.thechump.com/paypal-web-hosting.html I am convinced that as long as that one, and other similar ones, are in the cache my backlinks are wrongly attributed. This page was the worst redirect offender for me. It is obviously purposeful, and was run on a cable connected box. I did manage to get it shut down at least once, the cable company changed after I complained. A little detective work and you can figure out who did it.
I guess I wasn't very clear, I was tired. The cache showed a recent version, with the title correctly taken from the page, not the directory. Except I didn't figure it was the directory listing that it came from at the time. Google shows the meta-tag description from my page, that is what threw me off. I had noticed that Google was using the DMOZ description as a snippet quite a bit of late. There were threads here on the subject, but it did not seem to affect things, so it was unimportant to me.
Interesting that a search for allintitle: returns the correct title and the DMOZ description. I assume that my rankings won't be hurt by it.
Netmidwest, not sure.. I was on the 2nd page for 'Vacation homes' because my DMOZ description had 'vacation homes' within it where my meta description doesnt. Google then removed the DMOZ description and I jumped to the 4th page.. I'm speculating but I'd say that it does have an impact on the serps, how much who knows.
My DMOZ description is actually for main keywords... not secondary, easier to rank phrases. I would expect it to hurt if that is all it used to rank me. But today, nothing I am tracking with the keyword tracking tool moved more than 2 spots, up or down. Probably related to whatever Google is doing while PR is grayed.