Google is messing up my Meta Title

[mikey_w]

I created the following meta title for a page on my client’s website…

Check Your Car before Summer Vacation – Bob’s Volvo

In it, I have the article name followed by the company name.

Straight-forward enough, right?

Well for some annoying reason, Google is showing this when I do a search…

Check Your Car before Summer Vacation – Bob’s Volvo - Bob’s Volvo, Inc.

At first I thought I had a coding error, but now it seems like Google is appending my client’s company name on the end of the meta title a second time?!

What should I do?

I think my meta title tag is fine the way it is, and I don’t want to “fix” it, because then on other search engines I might not have the company name if you follow!

Suggestions?

[Mittineague]

@mikey_w

What should I do?

Accept it.

Google may or may not use what you hope it to. It uses what it considers best for the search engine users.

You can not tell Google to do anything, you can only suggest and hope it agrees with you.

[mikey_w]

@Mittineague

@mikey_w

What should I do?

Accept it.

Google may or may not use what you hope it to. It uses what it considers best for the search engine users.

You can not tell Google to do anything, you can only suggest and hope it agrees with you.

Don’t you think my meta title looks screwed up? (It makes me look bad as a developer to people seeing the search results!)

Wouldn’t you agree it is safer to leave the company name in my meta title for other search engines?

[Mittineague]

What are the exact search terms you’re using?
I’m not getting anything like that for what I’ve tried.

[mikey_w]

@Mittineague

What are the exact search terms you’re using?
I’m not getting anything like that for what I’ve tried.

It was a contrived example to protect my client.

But the way in which Google is appending a 2nd (unnecessary) company is identical.

[Mittineague]

@mikey_w

It was a contrived example to protect my client.

Well then there isn’t anyway to get any useful answers or help.
“Guessing” is pretty much useless.

If you don’t want to post, PM me

[mikey_w]

@Mittineague

Well then there isn’t anyway to get any useful answers or help.
“Guessing” is pretty much useless.

If you don’t want to post, PM me

What is to guess about?

I posted EXACTLY what Google was doing - I just tweaked the article title and company name.

(Sorry, but my client told me not to post stuff about his business in forums…)

---

Back on topic…

You are saying I can’t change Google.

And I asked if you thought the example above looks bad to people doing searches. (I think it looks like I fubar’d my code.)

I could not include the company name in the meta title, but then Bing and Yahoo might not insert an extra company name, thus leaving the search results without a company name.

I also considered moving the company name to the beginning, thus maybe making Google see that I already have a company name in thee.

Something like…

Bob’s Volvo – Check Your Car before Summer Vacation

or

Bob’s Volvo: Check Your Car before Summer Vacation

or

Bob’s Volvo :: Check Your Car before Summer Vacation

[John_Betong]

@mikey_w

Well for some annoying reason, Google is showing this when I do a search…

Check Your Car before Summer Vacation – Bob’s Volvo - Bob’s Volvo, Inc.

Be grateful for small mercies that Google manages to actually find your article. (Does it appear on page one?)

Just guessing… I should imagine there is another Bob’s Volvo Dealer with a .com extension and in Google’s infinite wisdom they decided to add .inc in their search results to avoid confusion.

[TechnoBear]

@Google

Google’s generation of page titles and descriptions (or “snippets”) is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web. The goal of the snippet and title is to best represent and describe each result and explain how it relates to the user’s query.

Influencing Title Links in Google Search | Google Search Central...

[Ohnoo]

@Mittineague

Google may or may not use what you hope it to. It uses what it considers best for the search engine users.

I agree there, I have a site that google decided to add my alt text “logo” for my logo in the description. So you see some description then logo then more description.

[Rgb_Dzine]

For every indexed page google add default title to indexed title, which has created when we started the site…