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I changed the title and meta description of a web page. It got re-indexed but still it shows in search results with the old title.

Why would this happen and how would we resolve it?

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    Once a page is fetched, it is indexed almost immediately. If the title tag and description meta-tag has changed prior to the page being fetched, generally, the SERP link and snippet will change also. Where you have to be careful is if the SERP link and snippet has not been the page title and description and Google is taking these elements from somewhere else. If these two HTML elements are properly tuned for length and content, then it should change. Another consideration is how you find these. Use a site: directive for the pages URL instead of a term search. There is a difference.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Feb 2, 2017 at 19:35
  • So what exactly should I do to see the updated Title and Description in the Google search?
    – Velidan
    Commented Jan 27, 2021 at 7:28

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Ok folks, is is a fact that Google may, from time to time, change your page title shown in search results. This is by design, and this happens because Google is attempting to show a concise description of the page, that IS ALSO also relevant to the query. As you probably know, there are endless variations of search queries on a single subject matter. What Google is concerned with is the intent of the user. According to Matt Cutts, Google is looking for three things:

  1. Something relatively short
  2. A good description of the page and ideally the site that the page is on; and lastly:
  3. That is is somehow relevant to the query.

In a perfect world, your page titles will already meet these criteria (i.e. describe the page AND the site), as well as posses inherent relevant to the query, and according to Cutts, "be somewhat short."

I read in the first answer provided to this question that Google is taking this info from somewhere else. For those of you paying close attention, often times it may appear that way (ex: changed content in a title may seem to come from a backlink or description from some other site.) If this seems confusing, just think about Google's Value proposition & their importance on relevance. Considering the aforementioned, it's safe to say that the page title will change only in the event that Google has determined that is makes the query more relevant to the user. And for all site owners, this should be a good thing. Higher relevance = higher click through rate = typically a better user experience.

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This is because your page has not been re-crawled yet. You can force a re-crawl in the webmaster tools of the search engine that is giving you problems. Crawlers tend to frequent sites that high occurrences of traffic, where sites that are lower in the ranking spectrum get less attention from the crawlers. Just force a re-crawl on your site, and you will see the new information updated once the crawler has reported the changes to the page.

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