Why are title tags all the same in SERP's.

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Why are title tags all the same in SERP's.

tama

9:34 pm on May 18, 2006 (gmt 0)

In the SERP's every one of my pages says "Sitename.com" but in my browser the title bar will say "Sitename.com: Individual Page Name" for each page. My site is PHP with a Mod Rewrite.

Anyone have any idea why the title tag isn't carrying across to the SERP's.

webdoctor

5:45 pm on May 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

Q1: Are you using frames?

Q2: If you click on the cached copy of the page in Google's results, then view the source, what is in the <title> tag?

garyr_h

6:32 pm on May 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

Are you listed in Dmoz? Sometimes Google uses the Dmoz title for the SERPs.

tama

8:00 am on May 21, 2006 (gmt 0)

OK, forgive me as I am not a programmer but I think I may have found the problem. When I look at the source code for each page, the title tags say "Sitename.com" as that is what it also says in the header file. But the actual title bar in the browser reads "Sitename.com: Individual Page Name"

How can I update the header file so that G's SERP's show individual titles for each page?

tigger

8:05 am on May 21, 2006 (gmt 0)

well I assume you have FTP access to the site? all you need do is open the site within some type of editor make the changes to the code then re-upload it

tama

8:15 am on May 21, 2006 (gmt 0)

I understand I can make the changes but I am unsure of what changes to make as I don't know anything except HTML.

If I delete the title tags entirely from the header file, the individual page names still show up in the title bar on the browser. Will this change be enough to get the individual page names to show up in the SERP's instead of "Sitename.com:"?

tigger

8:29 am on May 21, 2006 (gmt 0)

within the head you should have something like

all you need change is the <title>your URL </title> with the titles for that page

tama

8:38 am on May 21, 2006 (gmt 0)

Tigger thanks for the help.

That is exactly what I had in my header file before, and the SERP's just showed that. The guy that did the mod rewrite for me made it so that the navagation breadcrumbs became the title of each page. That's what I want to show up in the SERP's, not my "sitename.com"

tama

2:22 pm on May 22, 2006 (gmt 0)

webdoctor - no frames. Source code shows "sitename.com." Title bar shows more via php programming but that does not carry over to the SERP's.

garyr_h. Great suggestion but I'm not listed in dmoz.

webdoctor

7:32 am on May 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

mod rewrite for me made it so that the navagation breadcrumbs became the title of each page

mod_rewrite has no direct effect on the <title> tag.

IMHO you need to ask this guy what he changed APART from mod_rewrite :-)

g1smd

11:13 am on May 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

What is in the title bar should be the same as what appears in the SERPs, unless Google is pulling the title from ODP data.