Different google searches return different titles for the same page

Question

This is a hypothetical example of an actual problem. I hope it's clear.

When I search google for "dogs" I can see my website homepage http://dogs123.com.au with the title "Dogs a mans best friend!".

If I search for "dogs australia" I see the website homepage http://dogs123.com.au with an old page title "Dogs blah blah". Clicking through on this result gives the up to date, current page with the proper title.

I.e for two different searches, returning the same result, one returns the correct apge title, and one returns an old page title.

Why is this happening? Is it something on my side or Google's?

Answer 1

Google reserves the right to change a title they are displaying in search results if they feel it'll be more relevant to the search than what is actually set in the meta title tag. But if you've changed the title recently it's possible your searches are going to different data centers with an older index.

If australia is actually part of your search term I would test both phrases on http://www.google.com.au/ and see what the results are

Answer 2

This is most likely a relic of a previous site crawl - give it a month or so and it should disappear. Have you set up google webmaster tools? if not, do - it will give you all sorts of info about the way google has indexed your site.