SERPs Title showing different title to the meta title

Is google trying a new tactic? Is the Meta Title Tag relevant anymore?

[cucumberdesign]

We have a site that ranks well for our search terms (8-13 on google) but in the last few days have noticed that the SERP's title is different to that of our Meta Title.

lets, for example say our site's main meta title is "Placename Veterinary Hospital"

in the SERP's it should say:

Placename Veterinary Hospital
Description here
http://example.com

Right? Wrong!

Ours is currently showing what others are linking to our site with.

So for example we have a few sites where we have advertised our site (affiliates, back links, etc) and their links contain text like so "Placename Veterinary Hospital and Doggy Parlor"

That text is what the SERP's are showing as our websites title!

While this is a good thing in some ways because we have a more keyword rich title, based on multiple factors, but is this not taking relevance away from our Meta Title tag? and taking the power away from the webmasters/SEO companies

Has anyone else noticed this?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:14 pm (utc) on Aug. 17, 2007]
[edit reason] examplified [/edit]

[vetofunk]

Are you sure it's not your DMOZ title that Google is showing in the serps? I see this happening all the time.

[WiseWebDude]

Better make sure you check your robots.txt file. I've seen that happen before, a site accidentally blocks their site via robots.txt and the title will change in Google until they unblock it. Did you accidentally put / in your robots file?

Good:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /example/

Bad:

User-agent: *
Disallow: / example/

See the difference? That BAD one blocked off the ENTIRE site by one extra space, oops...it happens more than some imagine. I've seen it many times, I check their robots file and voilą.