I just noticed today that Google has put their own Title into the listing for the home page of our Taj Mahal website: www.taj-mahal.net

New "Google" title: Explore The Taj-Mahal
(note the hyphen they added as well)

MY TITLE: Explore the Taj Mahal online - " WOW ! 5-Stars! " - SundayTimes_London

My Title has been around for at least a year now... Perhaps they consider the quote etc to be "title spam" ?

Has anything else happened to Google SERPs? New algorithms? New rules?

Why would they do this? Has this affected other sites as well?

Thanks for your help!

Hi Donelson

Its not new.

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=11428
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum17/995-2-10.htm
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum10003/48.htm

Have a look at both your DMOZ listings...

Explore The Taj-Mahal - Virtual tour of the Taj Mahal with a user friendly interface. [English/French]
Computers: Multimedia: Software: Macromedia Flash: Animations

Explore the Taj Mahal - Armchair Travel provides a comprehensive virtual tour of this stunning monument via sensitive map and 360-degree Quick Time panoramas. Narration and music.
Regional: Asia: India: Uttar Pradesh: Localities: Agra: Arts and Entertainment: Taj Mahal

And this is what Google went with:

Explore The Taj-Mahal
Virtual tour of the Taj Mahal with a user friendly interface. [English/French]

Thanks, Chris...

Yes, the description has always been (vastly out-of-date) from DMOZ (sigh), but the Title was always the actual page title ( for more than FIVE YEARS! )

When / Why did Google decide to change the title as well?

( I am fully aware of all the DMOZ-pain, a global pain, a painful pain, an out-of-date pain, arrggghhh )

PS. I note that other website titles have suddenly changed as well, e.g. Trump Taj Mahal casino, etc.

Unfortunately there is not way to opt out of the ODP title in Google ... et. MSN have just release a META-tag that you can use to opt-out from ODP in MSN (THANKS MSN!) and I really hope Google will follow up

The MSN tags are:
<meta content="NOODP" name="ROBOTS" />
<meta content="NOODP" name="msnbot" />

Right now they both do the same because only MSN suports them :)

Again, my question:

What's Changed At Google? Why Now ? Why after Five Years ?

Why have I seen no other notes on this forum?

I have see NO NEWS about this at all, anywhere !

donelson perhaps if you read the links that chris D posted you will get more insight. :)

donelson perhaps if you read the links that chris D posted you will get more insight. :)I DID READ THEM , thank you.

They do NOT answer my question of: Why Now?

What's changed since yesterday or the day before ?

Things change at the search engines all the time. Google have used ODP titles on and off for a long, long time - you just got hit by it now. There probably is no other good explanaition than bad luck. I wish I could tell you something better but this is very often the natur of the (SEO) game

My guess is it's something to do with copyright/TM and your reference to the Sunday Times, change it to "a leading British Sunday" and see what happens ;-)

My guess is it's something to do with copyright/TM and your reference to the Sunday Times, change it to "a leading British Sunday" and see what happens ;-)Hmmm.. Could be right, but it's been that way for several years, AND the quote is verified and shown on our website...

But I'll change it and see what happens (why not!) and report back here.

Note: It was -- "SundayTimes_London"
(all one word, so human recognition must have been involved if this was the problem)

It's the only rational explanation I could come up with, is your DMOZ title not just "Taj-Mahal"?

It's the only rational explanation I could come up with, is your DMOZ title not just "Taj-Mahal"?Oh yes, the "DMOZ explanation" certainly fits the facts, BUT since we have only seen the Description coming (for years) from DMOZ but NOT the Title, I was wondering what bright spark (RIH) at Google thought "They hate DMOZ descriptions, let's really hurt them with DMOZ Titles as well, ha ha ha ha ha"

I've nothing against conspiracy theories per se, but my hunch is still with the more mundane, that is your reference to the Sunday Times....

I've nothing against conspiracy theories per se, but my hunch is still with the more mundane, that is your reference to the Sunday Times....Funny thing as well: (!!!) -
One of our other websites is now showing "short" titles as well, but NOT a DMOZ description (there is No DMOZ entry for our Explore St Paul's Cathedral ! ) but we're seeing a Short Title there.

www<dot>explore-stpauls<dot>net


PS. the Google.co.in (India) is just now showing the Short Taj Mahal title as well (after two days), so something must be up with Google !

And our Armchair Travel website is Now showing a short title as well.
www<dot>armchair-travel<dot>com

NONE of our sites have ever shown a "short title" before in 3 - 8 years! They've Always shown the actual page title, even when changed every few months...

I do not know where the St Pauls or Armchair Travel "short titles" have come from; not the content of the pages or the DMOZ as far as I can see...

So where are the non-DMOZ "short titles" coming from, and Why ?

I think that Google may be cracking down on "spam" in the titles of pages for the SERPs....

Our Explore Kew Gardens is still showing the Long Title and the page content description in the SERPs. www<dot>explore-kew-gardens<dot>net

I am also seeing other people's sites having their SERPs titles being changed as well, many with no DMOZ listings.

Well, the quote by the Sunday Times was not the problem, as suggested above. I removed the "SundayTimes_London" but it has made no difference.

Is there any recourse to bad (4 year-old) data from DMOZ being used by Google?

donelson - A few observations...

I noted in the past month or so that a title on a client site reverted to ODP for about a day or two and reverted back to what's on the page, so it may be that something in Big Daddy is handling titles differently... or that Google is playing with them. Our title had no enthusiasm built in, and it matched the search query exactly, so I have no idea why it might have been picked out for even temporary change.

Thinking your problem might be the quotation marks or the exclamation marks in titles, I tried searches that I thought might return these.

For the quotation marks, I tried "to be or not to be." Didn't see any quotes in the titles, but I didn't look too hard.

To see what Google did when it encountered exclamation marks in the title, I tried a search for [yahoo], without the exclamation in the search query. Note in the results (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=yahoo&btnG=Search) #4 the displayed title is...

Yahoo! Mail
- for the page mail.yahoo.com.

When you click this, you get a page at mail.yahoo.com, with this title...

Yahoo! Mail - The best web-based email!

Not sure whether this is the same or similar situation to yours or not. There appears to be some sort of redirect action in the url as the page comes up, but the url is the same as the page mentioned in the serps.

Also, I've noted that in picking out snippets, Google seems to be able to pick out sentences or clauses from page or description copy. Conceivably, if they're excluding promotional copy, they may be able to do the same in titles.

Your situation may be different... I haven't looked at it in as much detail as you have... but if it's the same, it may signal that Google is algorithmically pulling out what it deems "pushy" promotional copy from titles. If Google is doing this algorithmically, it's very likely that they can't distinguish between an enthusiastic quote and self-promotion.

They're showing your original title now :-(

They're showing your original title now :-(

Not here (SF Bay Area, US), at least not yet, and not on 66.102.7.104. They're showing...

"Explore The Taj-Mahal"

Still, I've never heard of G changing a title before, description yes, title no....

Robert & Glengara

Thanks very much. Yes, it is a mystery, and maybe it's Big Daddy weirdness (I don't think so) or even some new experiment (this has got my vote)...

I'll try taking out the excl marks now and see what happens.

BTW - here in the UK (London) I still see substiuted title "Taj-Mahal"...

Okay, I've changed it to
Explore the Taj Mahal online - "WOW, 5-Stars" says SundayTimes_London

...or even some new experiment (this has got my vote)...

I'll try taking out the excl marks now and see what happens.

I've changed it to Explore the Taj Mahal online - "WOW, 5-Stars" says SundayTimes_London

I'm guessing that you may have to take out the "WOW" too. I'll bet they want all steak and no sizzle. ;)

If this is an experiment, btw, perhaps somehow enabled by the layered indexing I'm thinking that Big Daddy may permit, no way of telling how fast the sizzle filter will react to changes. Could well be in a different time-frame than reflecting a simple title change.

Robert, let's give tonight's change a chance to be seen. In the past, this has taken around 2-3 days, although Googlebot is no longer visiting my site. I think it's all done via AdSense crawling now...

For about two minutes today, Google was showing the Original title for my website WITH the exclamation marks intact, even though the Current homepage has no excls.

Then it reverted to the "Explore the Taj-Mahal" title from DMOZ.

Could it be that some data centers are going through changes? Why?

Could it be that some data centers are going through changes? Why?

donelson - Great news on your glimpse of your title. I think you must be aware that Google has just spent many months building a new infrastructure ("Big Daddy") and is now exploring the bells and whistles, even while it is still ironing out the bugs.

From my own experience, I can say that there definitely are some bugs, and that a truncated title is minor compared to problems you might have. My approach has been to take good notes, just in case Google doesn't fix it, and to try not to lose too much sleep over it.

Take a look at...
BigDaddy, Missing Pages In Google & Is The Big G Out Of Space
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=11407

donelson - Great news on your glimpse of your title. I think you must be aware that Google has just spent many months building a new infrastructure ("Big Daddy") and is now exploring the bells and whistles, even while it is still ironing out the bugs.

From my own experience, I can say that there definitely are some bugs, and that a truncated title is minor compared to problems you might have. My approach has been to take good notes, just in case Google doesn't fix it, and to try not to lose too much sleep over it.

Take a look at...
BigDaddy, Missing Pages In Google & Is The Big G Out Of Space
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=11407Thanks very much.

When weird things like this happen, I make sure that they are reported here (for my own benefit as well as others).

In this case, the appearance of DMOZ titles (4-5 years old) are particularly bad form for Google. What if a site has significantly changed (e.g we've added Hindi and Japanese versions, but Google only lists English & French due to out-of-date DMOZ) ?

This whole DMOZ thing is really irritating. Has anyone threatened to sue Google (that's what you have to do to get their attention)? It seems that complaining does not work at all, as widely reported, e.g. Bob Cringely of PBS -
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060525.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060601.html

Well, the titles are mostly the short-versions, but I regularly see the correct page titles for periods of up to a few hours. (For the Taj in google.com and google.in, as well as the St Pauls, etc)

There must be something going on...

The bad DMOZ titles have become permanent for the past 2-3 weeks now. And the description is old as well. I NEVER gave that title or description to DMOZ, one of their editors (now long asleep) did it...

I really hate Google's attitude. "We'll call your site whatever we bloody well want, even if its WRONG and DMOZ is wrong, we'll do it anyway, and YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO QUESTION OR COMPLAIN. And by the way, we know DMOZ is outdated and you can't get any changes done there either. ha ha ha"

They are so arrogant and unapproachable.

"Do no evil" - what a load of total crap.

They have become THE BORG.

>> Why Now? <<

Not now, at all. They have been doing this for quite a long time.

I guess they do it when they trust the ODP title as a better match of your content than the one in your title tag.

>> Why Now? <<

Not now, at all. They have been doing this for quite a long time.

I guess they do it when they trust the ODP title as a better match of your content than the one in your title tag.So, you are saying that a Human Being at Google has made the decision not to trust my titles, or are we talking about a Machine's Ability to Trust? Don't make me laugh!

Does the machine know the truth? Of course not. It's just a bunch of rules (and not many) executed by a computer programme with less intelligence than a mosquito! (Yes, Googles rules to analyse websites are Fewer in number than the set of rules used by mosquitos!)

Our site title is true, and accurate and quoted and referenced on our site.

What right has Google to DENY this TRUTH?

The real reason is that Google cannot AFFORD the truth. It simply boils down to money. If Google wanted the truth, it would use humans to verify their results...

But if they tried to do that, they would not make so much money.

Denial of truth, for money = Google.

If the words in the title do not match the on-page content then that is a reason to not trust the words in the title.

Viz: Wow. Sunday. Times. 5. Stars. London.



Or, to put it another way: how many pages on the net have a title like Britney Spears Naked but on-page content that purely consists of links to Phentermine, Xanax, and Cialis sites. You'd think that Google would ignore the title tag content if they think it is deceptive, untrue, incomplete, or over-done, and use some other source: a snippet from the on-page content, or an ODP entry where available...

If the words in the title do not match the on-page content then that is a reason to not trust the words in the title.

Viz: Wow. Sunday. Times. 5. Stars. London. They do now, and always have matched the page content.

Maybe the Google machine is confused? A human certainly would see they are the same, truthful, verified and valid content.

From our site's home page-“ WOW ! ... Explore the Taj Mahal online ...
Thrilling ... Exotic ... Ravishing ... 5 Stars ! ”
- The Sunday Times, London UK ( full article here )

Actually tho if you really think about it this is theft of content on Google's part. If they are misrepresenting you then that is a serious crime.

They're not representing anything, and they are NOT a directory where people can submit entries according to the wording they like, nor are they an advertising agency.

If the algo has criteria for choosing whether to use the actual or the ODP title, then that's how it works and it's legitimate on their part - it is their search engine and they can program it as they choose.

They're not representing anything, and they are NOT a directory where people can submit entries according to the wording they like, nor are they an advertising agency.

If the algo has criteria for choosing whether to use the actual or the ODP title, then that's how it works and it's legitimate on their part - it is their search engine and they can program it as they choose.Marcia, your reply is appreciated, but not helpful. Everyone knows what you have said.

The question is: Is there a way to get MY title back, instead of the DMOZ title. That requires my investigating the possible causes.

If you can help in this regard, I would very much appreciate your insights.

For example, is there any way to get De-listed in DMOZ? Is there a pattern in sites where Google has used the DMOZ titles? Is there any way to get DMOZ to correct the title?

Right now, the DMOZ title is like - Blue-Widgets with a hyphen, which is COMPLETELY wrong. There should be NO hyphen. I never published or submitted anything to anyone with a hyphen in it. That hyphen must have been put in a DMOZ "editor" who made some sort of mistake.

Also, since our site is a virtual tour, our title's word "online" should be included to differentiate us from travel agents and airlines offering non-virtual tours to India. This is very important to people looking at Google SERPs who DO want an online virtual tour, not an expensive vacation.

Google claims to want to create (via machine, HA!) accurate listings, and for us to help by being clear in our pages, but this change, in fact, DIGUISES what we really do and makes the SERPs less accurate.

So, any help (such as the above suggestions) is appreciated.

Thanks.

Is there a way to get MY title back, instead of the DMOZ title.

I'd suggest that making a submission to DMOZ to edit the title would be the fastest way to get it to change in Google.

:) Do you know how to change this? If not, post again, and I'll try to be watching and answer this question for you. If you already know how to change it, I don't want to give you info you already know about. It makes some people I've known angry.

Thanks and God Bless,
10n97 ;)

I just noticed today that Google has put their own Title into the listing for the home page of our Taj Mahal website: www.taj-mahal.net

New "Google" title: Explore The Taj-Mahal
(note the hyphen they added as well)

MY TITLE: Explore the Taj Mahal online - " WOW ! 5-Stars! " - SundayTimes_London

My Title has been around for at least a year now... Perhaps they consider the quote etc to be "title spam" ?

Has anything else happened to Google SERPs? New algorithms? New rules?

Why would they do this? Has this affected other sites as well?

Thanks for your help!

I took the advice of going onto the DMOZ forums

http://resource-zone.com


and listed my problems there. An editor checked and found a number of errors, including a double-listing which might have been problematic.

We are now discussing an appropriate solution.

Thanks to all here for your support and advice.

Regards,
William Donelson
Armchair Travel Co Ltd

That's good news, if (actually, when) the ODP listing gets ironed out it should make a big difference.

Hi!

Perhaps I'm mistaking, but I'm encountering some 'weird' title-behavior too lately. For example, I am currently developing a website that has multiple languages, namely Dutch, English and Russian.

When I used the site: operator today I noticed a couple of things:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.dairyandfoodequipment.com%2F

- First of all, I noticed that some titles were properly displayed, except that google added some words after this title. These words were actually the alt tags of my navigation images.

- I also noticed that some languages were mixed up. The dutch word for 'projects' is 'projecten'. I noticed the title of a page was 'Van den Heuvel Projecten' (van den heuvel is the name of the company) when it was the english version of the page with the title tag set to 'Van den Heuvel Cheese Processing Equipment'.


Can anybody explain this to me? Or do I overlook something?
Thanks in advance

Google's language detection is far from perfect. With languages that are close to each other or have many similar words Google often fail. In Scandinavia its a very common problem with Danish and Norwegian. All engines mix it up all the time - including Google.

Ok, but how can it be that an english page with no 'projects' in it, can have a title with 'Projecten' in it, that is an alt tag from the navigation of the dutch version of the website...

That's good news, if (actually, when) the ODP listing gets ironed out it should make a big difference.Marcia, bad news.


I had a reply from "a DMOZ editor" who, with absolute and unchallengable power, has decided to make only the changes HE wants, and when he wants, and he won't discuss it anymore, and OH By The Way ---- !!! ---> He refuses to de-list our site because we don't like his changes.

(Note: one of the changes I requested was to put "virtual tour" at the end of our title, and I sent him a list of 50+ sites which DMOZ already lists this way as an example of what they're already doing - BUT HE STILL REFUSED!!! )

Arrogant illegitimate son of a lady of the night.


I am considering putting Javascript into our page so that anyone coming from DMOZ gets a 404... Grrrr.

The last hope is to move our key site over to a completely new URL, and they keep the original as re-direction page... "This site has moved..."

Comments on those two ideas please?


Seriously, this whole thing of (a) trying to be honest with a good site and (b) figthing constantly with the DMOZ/Google/whomever "its our club, the machine doesn't like you, we're not going to fix it, so you're not welcome" mentality is really getting me down.

Just announced today --- AVOID DMOZ TITLES

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOODP">
<meta name="msnbot" content="NOODP">
<meta name="GOOGLEBOT" content="NOODP">

http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/2006/07/more-control-over-page-snippets.html

THANKS Google Guys !

donelson - Yes, that is great news. Please report on how quickly it clears up your problem. I'd love to know.

Arrogant illegitimate son of a lady of the night.Umm.. you do know that some ODP editors read here, don't you? :eek:

donelson - Maybe too much optimism. The Google info seems to be all about snippets and descriptions, not titles. My emphasis below... quotes from the Google page...

The way we generate the descriptions (snippets) that appear under a page in the search results is completely automated.

One source we use to generate snippets is the Open Directory Project, or ODP. Some site owners want to be to able to request not using the ODP for generating snippets, and we're happy to let you all know we've added support for this. All you have to do is add a meta tag to your pages.

To direct all search engines that support the meta tag not to use ODP information for the page's description...

Once you add this meta tag to your pages, it may take some time for changes to your snippets to appear. Once we've recrawled your pages and refreshed our index, you should see updated snippets.

One hopes they might mean titles too, but they don't mention those.

donelson - Maybe too much optimism. The Google info seems to be all about snippets and descriptions, not titles.If you follow the "Webmaster Help Cener" link on the main Google info page I listed, you get to

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35264&topic=8523

Which states that "snippets" includes the Titles and the Descriptions.

IMHO -

DMOZ as a resource has several problems; slowness to respond to the general public, obscurity of "practiced" rules, arbitrariness & variablility of individual editors, etc.

But the worst problem is the conflicting attitudes and lack of a chain of command of any sort.

I heard "no keywords, no exceptions" from several editors, and then "some keywords and some exceptions" from others. And there was no clear indication of which cliques in DMOZ would prevail.

That left me with a sense of playing Russian Roulette.

It is time for DMOZ (like Wiki-pedia) to grow up and realise that basing an international resource on an ecer-changing volunteer force is going to produce some pretty weird and unfair results.

To fix DMOZ, there must be a chain of command and some sort of appeals process. You cannot have one editor doing work one way, and then have a subsequent editor reversing those decisions, and then a still subsequent editor going a third way.

I would just rather not be listed at all. I don't like gambling, especially with my livelihood.