Google is showing a short title in the mobile search results taken from the navigation menu rather than using the page title

Question

We found out that Google shows different site titles on the SERP depending on whether the search happens on mobile or desktop (see images below). We set the title tag to be "Your Export Partner: Frozen Food, Seafood,Meat & Poultry, Dairy" as correctly shown for the desktop search. However, the mobile result picks the first item from our navigation menu – "br global trade?".

I found two related issues but neither of the two expands on differences between mobile and desktop. Is there a way to change that on mobile?

Answer 1

A site: search shows that the individual page is being indexed with the longer title on mobile.

What is happening will be down to the fact you are getting the full navigation shown in the SERPs for that search. I've just tested about 5 sites and every site which gets this type of result is shown with the site title rather than the page title as the first result.

There is a chance Google pick something else here, as I assume their reason for wanting a shorter title is an aesthetic one. However, as long as it is showing your actual site title rather than some random text, I don't see this as an SEO error - it seems expected behaviour from Google.

Answer 2

I haven't looked at any other page. You should really use a few of the many sites out there for testing websites for correctness and completeness. Examples are ahrefs, ionos and nibbler.

I have noticed that if the title contains colons or pipes, it can cause browsers to either ignore the title or break up the title and display the second part. Try removing the colon.