Washerhelp Posted May 3, 2022 Posted May 3, 2022 Hi, I'm notified by Bing web tools that meta descriptions and meta titles are too long. I can see that for example one topic called, "Hotpoint Ultima Wt721 Error Code F10 Help?" has the following meta title - <title>Hotpoint Ultima Wt721 Error Code F10 Help? - UK Washing Machine Repair Questions - Washing machine Forum</title> I can't think why the name of the forum and parent forum would be added to the title? It makes virtually every meta title way too long, and also makes all topics have the same duplicate forum names added. I can see that the forum title is also added on topics in this Set Up & Guidance forum, so it's obviously meant to be like that. Is there a reason for doing it that I'm unable to think of? And apart from editing every post manually, is there a way to remove the name of the forums inside each meta title, please so that the meta title is just the title?
Solution opentype Posted May 3, 2022 Solution Posted May 3, 2022 (edited) I like it the way it is. It provides context which is great for SEO and people’s understanding of the content. Take this Google search result from one of my sites: The title “LUBR” wouldn’t make any sense at all. But the forum title makes it clear that this is a font identification request in relation to “LUBR” and the site title makes it clear that this is a search result from a typography website. And if you know that site already, seeing that brand in the title will increase the chance of clicking that link. Everything works together perfectly. Sure, the title can get long this way and might be cut off, but I would still say that overall, the benefits outweigh potential downsides. Edited May 3, 2022 by opentype Jim M, Marc and Thomas P 3
Washerhelp Posted May 4, 2022 Author Posted May 4, 2022 (edited) Many thanks for your reply. The overwhelming majority of titles created by forum users are very long indeed. Obviously there's no way to control what users decide to title their topics. It just seems unnecessary to lengthen the title considerably by automatically adding the name of the forum and the name of the sub- forum. I would have hoped that this would be an option you could turn off. Having said that, I presume it's only viewed as a technical error? And not one that affects results? It's just extremely annoying when all these places are constantly telling me there are errors on my site because I'm the type of person that is arguably a perfectionist and strives for things with no errors at all. It's very difficult to work out which errors are just technical errors, and which ones are the ones that you should fix. Am I right in concluding that having meta titles and descriptions that are too long brings only the concern that they may be truncated in search results, and not remotely an "error" that can cause ranking problems or any other problems? Edited May 4, 2022 by Washerhelp grammer
Daniel F Posted May 4, 2022 Posted May 4, 2022 23 minutes ago, Washerhelp said: Am I right in concluding that having meta titles and descriptions that are too long brings only the concern that they may be truncated in search results, Google isn't truncating them, instead they're rewriting the shown SERP titles. https://zyppy.com/seo/google-title-rewrite-study/ From my own experience it's not bad at all, most of the time google creates a better title based on the topic content than the one generated by the user. Washerhelp 1
HAIF Posted June 25, 2022 Posted June 25, 2022 (edited) On 5/4/2022 at 6:01 AM, Daniel F said: Google isn't truncating them, instead they're rewriting the shown SERP titles. https://zyppy.com/seo/google-title-rewrite-study/ From my own experience it's not bad at all, most of the time google creates a better title based on the topic content than the one generated by the user. I've actually had a very bad experience with Google re-writing page titles. Google took something like "Jane is awesome, but Jim kicks puppies" and changed it to "Jane kicks puppies." The Jane in question was an important local business leader, and I heard from her lawyer. After explaining that Google ruins everything it touches, I told him I'd change the text on the forum, and we can both cross our fingers and hope that Google updates things on its end. Google eventually did, but it caused a lot of unnecessary anxiety and legal complications. Edited June 25, 2022 by HAIF
Marc Posted June 27, 2022 Posted June 27, 2022 You would be best to contact google if you have legal issues resulting from their actions
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