Google SERPS showing URL instead of TITLE

For some, but not all of my pages.

[NoLimits]

I found what I believe to be the reason I have seen a loss in traffic from G in the last week or so.

A lot of my pages are being indexed, but the title is not being recorded - instead, the URL is being used.

I'm using a php driven site, but haven't had any indexing problems to date... anyone have any input on why this is happening and/or how I stop it from happening in the future?

[stickyboy]

NoLimits - i get the same problem as you in that the pages with url change all the time, cant find any logic to it at all. The only page that never has had a title though is my homepage

g1smd - i originally had my internal page links as /page1.htm but she suggested one time to change them to www.domainname.com/page1.htm instead, is that still the best way?

[g1smd]

>> I originally had my internal page links as /page1.htm but she suggested one time to change them to www.domainname.com/page1.htm instead, is that still the best way? <<

You can do either:

- all links as:

www.domainname.com/page1.html
www.domainname.com/page2.html
www.domainname.com/page3.html

OR

- use a "domain" <base> tag and then use links that are "root relative" (begin with a / on URL):

<base href="http://www.domain.com/">

/page1.html
/page2.html
/page3.html

The latter will keep the code size down, and allow easy migration to another domain by editing the base tag.

[NoLimits]

My god.

I wish I could find some logic to this. Today the SERPS took another shift towards more URL only (for me anyways)

More than 50% of my pages are now URL only and I have no idea why. Someone suggested changing the navigational links to images to avoid duplicate content... if this is the case Google can kiss my ass. I refuse to make my pages less efficient.

I've been keeping revenue the same by simply continuing to add more content - but every page I add ends up URL only on down the road. I am very, very tired of this.

If anyone who has experience with this would like to look at my site in question and offer advice, I would greatly appreciate it - just sticky me and I'll send the URL your way.

Thanks to all who have contributed ideas to the thread.

[NoLimits]

Brief follow-up for future URL only resolution seekers.

I made some changes as suggested by G1SMD.

1 such change was to get my code 100% up to snuff. G1 noticed that when running my site through the wc3 validator it was throwing a severe error.

This error turned out the be the result of a copywright symbol that I created in notepad using alt + numbers. This was a non UTF-8 character and prevented the validator from even giving an actual number of errors.

Once that was fixed, I made a couple other small changes.

One noteable one was, I had a head tag in the footer of my page as well. I can't remember exactly why it was there, but if I recall correctly it was to prevent caching on an old version of mozilla. At any rate - it's gone now.

Aside from the 2 major fixes (non utf-8 character, and head tags) I just fixed a few trivial things.... valign middle instead of center, etc.

I'm thrilled to say that when doing a site:domain.com search - I'm seeing a LOT less URL only pages, especially on my top level pages (most recently crawled)

Hopefully someone else can use this info. I was in denial - my site is/was penalized up the wazoo, or Google's spiders were tripping over a coding flaw of mine.

[HRoth]

I have a few pages that are url only. I noticed that for some of them, great gobs of the content had been stolen and put up by other sites, which I found out by cranking each url-only page through copyscape. When I got those sites to take down my content, my pages turned from url-only to full listing. This worked for about 20% of the pages that were url only. Almost all the rest that are still url-only are old pages no longer really a part of the site.

I previously had tried validating the html on these pages, but it did not make any difference.

[stickyboy]

i created an exact replica of my original site which has been mostly listed as URL for a year now and all the pages are listed ok on the new domain, so presume it was one of the link exchanges possibly that caused problems?

[NoLimits]

I have no link exchanges. I have lots of links coming in from various sites, but I have exchanged no links.

I just came back to the thread because I found it in google whilst looking for people in my situation.

My ENTIRE site is now URL only. I thought it was getting better, but I think it was old SERP results. Now that there are some new results showing - I'm hosed. I have literally less than 30 pages showing a title out of just under 800.

I'm doing all of the things necessary to get my pages in check. I've got them validated, and the last thing I need to do is meta descriptions. Would not having meta descriptions cause my entire site to get hosed?

Every page has a different title... no dup content. I've checked for hijackers, etc and can't find anything. I just don't understand what I need to fix. I'm afraid to move the content to a new domain, but I will if it doesn't show signs of improvement in coming weeks.

Anyone reading my rambling still in this thread - DIVERSIFY! Have more than one primary site. Kill the mother ship! Get my drift?

[MrSpeed]

How's the PR for those url only pages?

[daveVk]

Url only entries seem to be supplementary results reported in lazy fashion, if you cut the url and paste it in G search box, full title and snippet are returned. Repeating the procedure with the page title, instead of url, shows page is in sup index.

[nzmatt]

There are no url only SERPS listed for 'site:www.mysite.com' searches at present - only the full titled pages.

[h8dk70]

I posted a separate topic in another forum (about the same problem) before I saw this one. After having read this thread it seems to me nobody really knows why some pages appear as URL's only – no title/description in Google results?

I noticed that the pages from my site that appeared with title in SERPS used to come up in search results for specific keywords. However, now when they appear as URLS they don’t come up in search results for those keywords. Conclusion they are not indexed any more for some mysterious reason.

[daveVk]

h8dk70 - try pasting the url of one of your 'url only' results into google search box and see what it finds. For mine get title and snippet. Appears google holds data somewhere

[h8dk70]

Yes, I've tried that. It only displays the URL.

[ruip]

3 cases, same CMS, same kind of site diferent sectors.
Diferent titles and descriptions in single pages.

Site1- launch date march/05 titles and snippets droped in Set/05 go back 02 Outub
Site2- launch date 2-July droped in mid Out go back last week
Site3- launch date 4-Out droped in Nov,
i'm waiting for this one.

We don't make any change in sites after drop.
Until now, wait is better move.

Until jagger end we don't change nothing.
:)If jagger end in 2007 or later we need to do something.

[NoLimits]

site:domain.com is bringing up both url and non-url only listings for me.

Also, when I search for a URL only page of mine by the full URL, I get a URL only result.

I'm just lost as to why pages that once had titles would then lose them. I have only one page on my entire site that shows up with "supplimental"

I'm adding meta descriptions right now...

I've noticed that the only pages I have left, are my top level pages... it has a title for every page that is linked off the index page - but after that it gets really thin...

[NoLimits]

Okay, I have added meta descriptions.

I have exact counts of which pages are URL only and which ones have titles.

Now it's probably just going to be a waiting game I'm thinking. I have another domain I could easily move the content to... but would I do a 301 to redirect from the old domain to the new?

Should I move the content? Should I leave it?

[FromRocky]

This is what I noticed:

If it is fully listed, there are 5 lines below the listing.

* Show Google's cache of www.mysite.com
* Find web pages that are similar to www.mysite.com
* Find web pages that link to www.mysite.com
* Find web pages from the site www.mysite.com
* Find web pages that contain the term "www.mysite.com"

There are two types of URL only listings:

First type shows 4 of the above 5 lines:
* Find web pages that are similar to www.mysite.com
* Find web pages that link to www.mysite.com
* Find web pages from the site www.mysite.com
* Find web pages that contain the term "www.mysite.com"
If you use "site:www.mysite.com", you will see the full listing (title & descriptions)

Second type shows only 3 out of 5:
* Find web pages that are similar to www.mysite.com
* Find web pages that link to www.mysite.com
* Find web pages that contain the term "www.mysite.com"
Doesn't matter what you do, it's still URL only listing.

Is the first type above just a transition from full to URL listing?

[NoLimits]

... some more strange happenings.

My URL only pages are now ranking where they used to rank when they had titles, but they are still URL only.

Does this make any sense?

[phantombookman]

This is not necessarily a penalty, I believe it can also be a crawling hitch, unable to process etc.

I have seen pages of mine go URL only and eventually go back to normal, happens all the time, never used to though I grant you

[NoLimits]

If googlebot is having problems it sure isn't reporting it to my G Sitemaps.

I'm astounded that the site is bringing in any money at all now that I've been beheaded in Google... thank goodness for MSN and Y! They always seems to be able to index my site and show it to surfers properly. Why is it always games with Google?

[daveVk]

FromRocky - further observation on first type, url only

site:mysite "title of url only page"

gives full listing, last line
<url> - <size> - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

site:mysite <url>

gives full listing, last line (cache missing as you indicate)
<url> - Similar pages

or do I have a third type?

[g1smd]

>> After having read this thread it seems to me nobody really knows why some pages appear as URL's only – no title/description in Google results? <<

Google's standard answer has been that URL-only entries are for pages where Google has seen the URL in a link on another page but hasn't yet crawled and indexed the actual page mentioned.

The other way that a page becomes URL only is when Google thinks it is duplicate content; the next stage is that the page disappears from the index entirely.

Duplicate content can come in many forms:
- offsite, where scrapers are presenting your content elsewhere (not much control over that)
- offsite, where multiple 302 redirects point at your site (use <base> tag to counteract this)
- offsite, where you run multiple domains with the same content (point all domains to same server and use 301 redirect)
- onsite, where you have the same content at both www and non-www (use 301 redirect to fix that)
- onsite, where you use the same title and description on multiple pages (even though rest of page really is different) - make sure that every title and meta description really is different.

This latter point is most important as of the last few weeks.

[h8dk70]

g1smd,

Now that I think about it, could it be that some of my pages turned into URL's because the links to those pages changed. What happens with my site is when the new entries are added to my database the links to older entries move down to the second page, third page and so on and so forth. Could this confuse googlebot?
Thanks.

[NoLimits]

Good question h8

My articles category pages update in the same manner as you mention.

I would hope, that the search engine with the largest market share of all engines - would know how to deal with this. If not - it is Google that should be changing their pages.

[BillyS]

My URL only pages are now ranking where they used to rank when they had titles, but they are still URL only.

I am currently experiencing the exact same thing.

My best ranking term in google has now turned url only.

[MoveyourwebSEO]

Hi!

The problem of my site lies in the fact that I've noticed that I had base href for www.mysite.net and UNFORTUNATELY base href for mysite.net...
So, the big G thinks that I have 2 different sites and has penalised it..(only url is in G's index)
Well, I made a 301 redirect and got rid of NON-WWW version..

So, the question is when will google forgive me and let the snippet as well as other pages (sitemap.xml generated) apper in the index? Even approximately?

All opinions are greatly appreciated!

[h8dk70]

I have an idea how to fix my site. There were few things which could've caused the problem for me, one of those was I've been playing with robots.txt just before my pages turned into urls in google SERPS. Another thing is the description and keywords are the same on my pages.

So, what I'm going to do is as follows:

1. Fix description and keywords for all of my pages.
2. Once I've done step # 1 I'm going to recreate the problematic pages. Something like this:

update tablename
set id = id+999
where id in (1,2,3...n); /* I will get these numbers manually from google */

That will essentially create new pages for the existing content and they will each have individual title + description/keywords. The old pages (only the ones with the problem) will cease to exist.

If you think there's something wrong with this approach speak now or... I will just do it over the weekend.

Thanks in advance for your comments.

[daveVk]

h8

What happens with my site is when the new entries are added to my database the links to older entries move down to the second page, third page and so on and so forth

If I understand correct, a given url will retrieve different content over time. This is not a good idea for users (bookmarking) or bots. Suggest change to scheme where numbers not reused if possible.

[h8dk70]

daveVk,

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Basically an article page looks like this: page_id_999.html
When new articles are posted i.e. page_id_1000.html, page_id_1001 etc; page_id_999.html moves down and eventually moves to the second navigation page in that category, but the url for that page stays the same. Hope I was clear enough. If not, let me know I'll send you my website address, that may be easier.

[MoveyourwebSEO]

People, I'm still waiting suggestions to my problem.. Is everything I've done right? And when do I expect a freshbot to come and fix "only-url listing"?