Just been doing some checking of one of my sites position in Google, and when I have searched for the various search terms and see my listing, it appears as though Google have completly changed my title round. Instead of listing my correct title from my <title tags> it looks like they are listing the title that DMOZ use in my listing there. Not sure why this is happening - hopefully, its just a temporary glitch and will revert back to normal. Has anyone else experienced Google messing about with their title tags ?? Alex
Definately no looking at the Google DIrectory listings Title tag is in proper place. Do a search on Google.com for ... Real Estate Greece Look at the third result on the 1st page. ( propertygr.com ) Look at the title Google lists ... Then visit my page and look at my "real" title. Any thoughts ?? Alex
Yes, this can happen, luckily there is a meta tag you can use which Google obeys to ignore the ODP title and use your official title instead: <meta name="robots" content="noodp" /> You don't have to worry if my information is correct, here is the official confirmation from the Big G
Afraid I don't see your problem. It looks the same to me...just not all the text is being displayed which is normal.
Wealdie Thanks for that meta tag - I never knew about that one. Gonna start adding it to my sites that are listed in DMOZ, so I won't have this problem again in the future. Thanks Alex
Hi Alex - happy to help. What you say is a good way to look at it - if you have a site listed in DMOZ/ODP please do use this tag - otherwise, no need to bother. It used to happen to my main site as well - until I found out about this tag
ohk, even before putting in the content noodp thingy can you please move ur title just after <head> open tag, wat happened was since google couldnt find ur title, it wen for Dmoz title. Even without looking at ur source, i knew ur title was misplaced
No. It's not a problem with Google not being able to find it and it's not the title tag that's the issue - it's the meta description tag. Google uses it for at least some search queries as the "snippet" but for a couple of years now Google will sometimes substitute the DMOZ description for the webmaster's meta description. When webmasters were understandably upset at the practice, Google offered a way for webmasters to instruct them NOT to use the usually bland vanilla DMOZ description and to use the coded description instead. Wealdie had it right, except he called it "title" instead of "meta description":
Hi Minstrel, Just as a point of interest, Google used to return the ODP title and meta description for my main site until I added this tag - so I have seen the behaviour with my own eyes. Agreed the Google guidelines only make mention of the meta description though! BTW - if anyone is interested there is a similar Tag for Yahoo - to stop them returning a Yahoo Directory Title and Description in their SERP's: <meta name="robots" content="noydir" />
Wealdie, That Yahoo tag was also great. For years, I have had one of my sites displaying the Yahoo Directory title and description in the Yahoo results page - they have my title with just one word in it, and I could never work out how to get them to display my full title. Hopefully, that tag for Yahoo can fix that problem for me as well. Thanks again Alex
Just wondering why you are using these? This is all useless and only serves to clutter the Head area and lower your content to code ratio.
I have seen other posts some time back that talked about the title being replaced as well - I've never seen it myself... You can also use variants of the noodp tag: From Opting Out of Open Directory Listings for Webmasters: Later, Yahoo added: <META NAME="Slurp" CONTENT="NOODP">
I think may be because your Title tag is a bit spammy in my opinion is this really necessary?? <title>Property GR Real Estate Greece Land Houses Homes Sale Greek Islands Real Estate Greece</title>