Google Displaying "Read More" Rather Than the Page Title for a "site:" Search

Question

I am having some trouble with Search Engine Optimization.

When I look up "site:example.com", the first result is the index page. The third result that pops up says the title is: "Read More". I want it to display like the 2nd result does. The 2nd result displays: "Suma Karandiar, M.A., LCPC - Counselors In Association" but I can't find any differences between the 2nd page and the first.

What am I supposed to do to tell Google that I want a different title than what they are displaying?

This is not the same as Title tag different from title appearing in Google? because that question is about Google rewriting titles based on searches. In this case "Read More" is the title used for all searches.

Answer 1

Google is injecting 'Read more' because you have duplicate titles, displaying 3 separate URL's with the exact same titles is not only bad seo but is not displaying information on which is more suitable according to their search.

Currently you have:

• / = <title>Counselors In Association</title>
• /virginia.html = <title>Counselors In Association</title>
• /debra.html = <title>Counselors In Association</title>

As you can see these are all the same and Google will not display exact duplicates within a search because there's never any need to and will confuse people what to click.

Opt to use titles that inform people about the page before they click i.e.

• / = <title>Counselors In Association</title>
• /virginia.html = <title>About Virginia Secemsky, Ph.D., LCSW</title>
• /debra.html = <title>About Debra Kowalczyk, M.A., LCPC</title>

You can add Counselors In Association in the title such as;

<title>Debra Kowalczyk, M.A., LCPC - Counselors In Association</title>

But there should be no need too and bloasts the title inessential because Google will associate that dr without it... because you have Counselors In Association written on the page.

Another issue is that some of you pages are missing meta discriptions, these are important for visitors and seo.

Answer 2

"Read more" is commonly used as anchor text. You must have links on your site pointing to this page that that use "read more" as the anchor text.

Google will occasionally title a page with incoming anchor text when it can't figure out what the title should be in any other way. That generally means that one of the following is true about the page:

• It doesn't have a title tag (or has a blank title page)
• It has the same title as other pages on your site
• It is listed in robots.txt such that Googlebot can't crawl it.

Google's John Mueller recently chimed in here to say that pages in robots.txt are unlikely to appear in search results except for "site:" searches.

---

I tracked down your site. Your problem appears to be that all your pages have the same title. Instead of <title>Counselors In Association</title> that page would be better with <title>Debra Kowalczyk, M.A., LCPC - Counselors In Association</title>