Incorrect title indexed

[stevelibby]

Hi
I am very very stuck. One of my sites that i have demoted has no meta tags. Now i know that g will then choose content from that page, however the title that it has chosen has absolutly no bearing on the page or indeed on the site. Any answers?

[supafresh]

How are errors handled by your server? sometimes if Goog encouters an error at the time its crawling weird things happen.

[stevelibby]

not sure how things are done at the server end, but its definately a wierd one.

[LifeinAsia]

Any answers?

Yes- add meta tags. :)

That said, we have seen the same thing on pages that DO have meta tags, title, H1, etc. And if you click on the cached page link and view the source code, you'll see that our page rendered that information correctly. It's just an oopsy on Google's part.

[Robert Charlton]

...however the title that it has chosen has absolutly no bearing on the page or indeed on the site

When you say "no meta tags," are you talking about meta descriptions and keywords, or are you lumping the title element in the head section in with these?

I ask because you mention that Google has chosen a title for you. The title is technically not a meta tag, but it is arguably the most important single onpage element in site optimization. Unique titles for every page you care about are an absolutely must.

I've launched sites without descriptions and keywords, and that doesn't appear to hurt them. It can be argued that, if your pages are all very similar, no meta description on a page is better than an identical description sitewide.

[Robert Charlton]

PS: It's also possible that Google is pulling a title from ODP, though your description of the problem ("absolutly no bearing on the page or indeed on the site") suggests that that isn't likely.

Just grasping at straws... could this be a "used" domain that in another incarnation was about a different subject that might have a residual ODP listing?