[DOCU-651] URLs and page titles don't match in Google search results Created: 07/Dec/15  Updated: 04/Jan/17  Resolved: 04/Jan/17

Status: Closed
Project: Documentation
Component/s: tools
Affects Version/s: None
Fix Version/s: None

Type: Bug Priority: Major
Reporter: Antti Hietala Assignee: Unassigned
Resolution: Done Votes: 0
Labels: None
Remaining Estimate: 3h 55m
Time Spent: 5m
Original Estimate: 0.5d

Attachments: PNG File diff_ver_in_one_title.png     PNG File magnolia_DOCS45.png     PNG File url-title-mismatch.png    
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Acceptance criteria:
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Bug DoR:
[ ]* Steps to reproduce, expected, and actual results filled
[ ]* Affected version filled
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 Description   

Documentation page URLs and titles don't match in Google search results. The title of a result snippets says 5.4 but the URL is DOCS45. Mixups also occur with 5.4 and 5.3. Investigate why Google indexes incorrect titles.



 Comments   
Comment by Pete Ryland [ 07/Dec/15 ]

This is quite odd, since that's not the real page title. Perhaps try adding DOCS45 pages to the sitemap.xml?

Comment by Martin DrĂ¡pela [ 16/May/16 ]

This is interesting. I've managed to strike even the following on Google's SERP when searching for

magnolia DOCS45

(not enclosed in quotes in Google's search field):

"Magnolia 4.5 Documentation - Magnolia 5.4 Documentation"

(See an actual screenshot attached above.)

Obviously, what is shown as the page title on SERP is not from the title element of the page, as the <title> element for the DOCS45 homepage in fact has

<title>Magnolia 4.5 Documentation - Magnolia 4.5 Documentation - Magnolia</title>

While a SEO expert might object, my impression after reading the following page:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en

and also some of the comments here:
https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-a-Google-Searchs-result-title-the-same-as-my-website-title-but-the-description-is-the-same

is that there is little we can do to fix this.

Comment by Martin DrĂ¡pela [ 02/Dec/16 ]

A quick check on Dec 2 shows the issue(s) still seems to occur:

Comment by Antti Hietala [ 04/Jan/17 ]

I closed the ticket as there seems to be little we can do about this. Our <title> elements and <h1> elements are correct. But Google constructs the search result titles according to its own logic.

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