3

I have a website (wordpess) and the most important page of my website is displayed with a wrong title on Google search results.

The title of the page is in this format: "Category name | Website name". It's not a long title, about 45-50 characters. But as Google displays it; it appears "First - Category name | Website name" in the search results.

This is a major problem for me as this is not an English website so the word "First -" looks really bad.

I've checked the cached page of Google and the cached page appears to have the correct title (without the "First -" in the beginning), so I assume this is not an indexing issue.

Does Google just put that "First -" itself? Otherwise where might that be coming from?

Thanks a lot if anyone can help me. I'm even willing to pay to get rid of this. Such a nuisance this is to me and I just can't figure it out.

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

Does Google just put that "First -" itself?

Nope.

Otherwise where might that be coming from?

There are several things you will need to check since this is WordPress. All of them are misconfigurations of one kind or another

  1. Check your plugins to see if you have an SEO helper such as All in One SEO, Platinum SEO or Yoast SEO. if you have one, check its settings to be sure you are not programmatically adding the "First" in front of the title.
  2. Also check to see if you are using Facebook OpenGraph elements either hardcoded into the page/post templates or set via a plugin. Search engines will sometimes grab the OpenGraph titles and ignore the <title> tags.
  3. Check your functions.php to see if there is a function defined that changes the default title behavior. Depending on how the theme was constructed, you may have to go down the rabbit hole a little and follow a chain of includes to get the whole picture.

These suggestions are ordered from (IMHO) most likely to least, so follow them in this order to save time.

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    Thank you very much. I have removed the opengraph plugin a few days ago and now I see Google is displaying the correct title. I suppose the problem was about the opengraph meta titles or whatever it does in the <head> section - in case anyone else is having a similar problem.
    – mehmeh
    May 26, 2016 at 1:25
  • Good catch. You need to be careful about which plugins you install on a WordPress site. Do as much research as you can, read the support forums for that plugin, and look at the ratings/active install numbers. Any plugin that seems to generate a lot of "Halp, it's broken" posts and has lots of 1 and 2 ratings is probably better off left uninstalled.
    – JCL1178
    Jun 3, 2016 at 16:58

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.