Alternating search result titles for the same page

How is google choosing which to use?

[BradleyT]

Does anyone know how google is choosing which title to display when the same page is a result for multiple queries?

To see what I mean -

SERP title - "Welcome to Adwords"
[google.com...]

SERP title - "Google Adwords"
[google.com...]

Both results go to the adwords homepage which has the title "Welcome to AdWords". I first noticed this happening when doing 1 word and 2 word searches of my employers name.

[jonrichd]

Is it possible that your employer is listed in DMOZ?

'Welcome to Adwords' is the title of the Adwords site, so it would make sense for that to be used in the search results page. OTOH, 'Google Adwords' is the link from DMOZ, and I seem to remember Google using that for the result heading from time to time (I know Yahoo does this with their directory).

because you used 'Google Adwords' as your search term, that might be the reason they used the DMOZ title instead of your regular one.

[BradleyT]

Aha. Yes, our company listing is alternating between the main page title and the DMOZ title too.

[edited by: BradleyT at 3:03 pm (utc) on Nov. 16, 2007]

[cangoou]

You can turn this behavoir off by using:
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow, noodp">

"noodp" is the switch telling google to always use the html-title, never the odp-/dmoz-title.