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General Discussion

Ben MacAdam
Ben MacAdam
14,982 Points
Posted by Ben MacAdam
Ben MacAdam
14,982 Points

Google injecting "sitename:" before page title in search results

I recently noticed google injecting my website name and a colon before my actual homepage title tag. I am wondering if this is harming SEO since I would rather be coming up for the title tag of course. I am using Yoast's Wordpress SEO plugin and my actual title tag is reflected on the page itself, but in the SEPR I am getting the issue.

Any thoughts or others experiencing the issue with a fix?

Thanks!

Adam Sackfield
Adam Sackfield
Courses Plus Student 19,663 Points

From a quick Google search it seems to be related to Yoast rather than Google here

4 Answers

Ben MacAdam
Ben MacAdam
14,982 Points
Ben MacAdam
Ben MacAdam
14,982 Points

Thanks Adam, I had been googling about it for a few days and kept seeing people experiencing it without any solutions and saying it was google. Such as here and then the plugin author saying it's google here , but I will definitely tryout some suggestions from the link you shared.

Adam Sackfield
Adam Sackfield
Courses Plus Student 19,663 Points

Let me know if you find out what causing it, in case I ever run into the issue.

Ben MacAdam
Ben MacAdam
14,982 Points
Ben MacAdam
Ben MacAdam
14,982 Points

Will do! So far I have changed my header to have 

<title><?php wp_title(''); ?></title>

instead of 

<title><?php wp_title( '|', true, 'right' ); ?></title>

but it doesn't look like that will change things.

I just now stripped out the %%title%% from the plugin template settings so it's now %%page%% - %%sitename%% and I am crossing my fingers that that'll do it. I'll let you know once I give google some time to update.

Thanks!

Adam Sackfield
Adam Sackfield
Courses Plus Student 19,663 Points

That's the only way I have ever added a title tag in WP. I edited your markdown for correct code embedding. If you click edit you can see the formatting now :)

Ben MacAdam
Ben MacAdam
14,982 Points
Ben MacAdam
Ben MacAdam
14,982 Points

oops sorry that php formatting meant to use 

<?php wp_title(''); ?>
Bethany Wellard
Bethany Wellard
3,180 Points
Bethany Wellard
Bethany Wellard
3,180 Points

I have been having this issue with my site the past week. My site isn't on wordpress either. From what I noticed it was only if I googled my site directly but if I googled it under keywords that didn't happen.