Google Results Website Title Problem

Hi Barb, quick question for you.

I'm going to be changing the focus of certain services on my website in the near future so I will be revising a few of my page titles (specifically my homepage title).

My question is - In the Google results for my website, the title for my homepage displays my business name first before anything else, even though that's not how I have the text written in my title tag (See Attachments). I think I asked about this in one of the live sessions but I haven't followed up on it yet.

Do you have any idea why Google is displaying my title like this? Should I contact my hosting service or maybe contact Google?

Hey @erin GREAT question!! So many people wonder about this and are never sure.

When a meta tag, like a Site Title, is added, Google takes it as a suggestion as opposed to a "you must" command. There is a couple things you can check to be sure that you've done everything you can.

You site has a title - check.
What is the homepage title? Is it the same or different than the site title? Sometimes the homepage title overrides the site title.
Platform nuances. Yours is a custom html build so this is less of an issue but many website builders "force" the name of the business into a meta tag. Use the inspect tool to see if you can determine why your business name is showing up.

Finally, rejoice in the fact that Google has fully indexed your site and live with their creativity. 🤣

Ok thanks. So could it be the meta property og:site_name tag on my homepage then? I thought the meta info was specifically for social media when the link is posted.

Here's all of my meta info on my homepage.

The code was cut off in my previous reply.

The words that are displaying on Google are coming from the

"Active Dynamics:" could be coming from the og:site name. Try changing it and see if it changes on Google.

Yeah I'll try that. It's a bit confusing though - I forgot that I can see all of my other page listings by using site:activedynamics.ca. No other page listing has the "Active Dynamics:" at the beginning of the listing yet every page on my site has the og:site_name tag. So it's obviously only a problem with the homepage.

Not sure exactly what to change in the site_name since Google seems to be using a mix of both the title tag and the site_name tag (if that's the exact problem). For example if I'm mixing both, how does that affect the listing title in other search engines? Not that other search engines mean that much compared to Google lol but it's a legit concern I suppose.

Or maybe the solution is to remove the site_name tag from the homepage altogether. But then how does that affect the link when it's posted on social media (does social media require that tag?)

Uhg, what a pain… Guess I have some experimenting to do lol

Depending on which meta tag you can most easily revise, just make a subtle change like Active Dynamics: to Active Dynamics Video Slideshows:

Thanks, yeah I'll try a few different things.