One of our sites page tiltes is not appearing correctly in the Google SERPS.
G has the title listed as
< html > < head > < title > my title ...
My concern is
1. It looks amateurish.
2. It can't be helping the rankings for the words in "my title"
I can't see anything in the source code to suggest why this is being picked up in this way, but I'm guessing it's something in the page design/layout (I didn't design the page, just supplied the title, metas, and optimised copy)
Is this a familiar problem and is there an easy fix?
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Page Title Not Shown Correctly In Serps
Started by
greenlightsuk
, Dec 31 2004 11:51 AM
15 replies to this topic
#2
chrishirst
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Posted 31 December 2004 - 12:00 PM
sounds like some invalid markup. a page name, link to the SERP and we could take a look.
could even be a word processor character if it's been opened and saved in Word or something
could even be a word processor character if it's been opened and saved in Word or something
#3
greenlightsuk
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Posted 04 January 2005 - 11:35 AM
Thanks Chris. Here's a link to the SERP listing (should be the top one) :
http://www.google.co...le Search&meta=
http://www.google.co...le Search&meta=
QUOTE(chrishirst @ Dec 31 2004, 01:00 PM)
sounds like some invalid markup. a page name, link to the SERP and we could take a look.
could even be a word processor character if it's been opened and saved in Word or something
could even be a word processor character if it's been opened and saved in Word or something
#4
Jill
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Posted 04 January 2005 - 11:41 AM
Greenlightsuk, look at Google's cache of that page, they've got just a whole page of jibberish code.
What's this at the beginning of your code: ÿþ
??
What's this at the beginning of your code: ÿþ
??
#5
Randy
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Posted 04 January 2005 - 01:00 PM
Wow. Now that's a weird one!
Definitely something going on in the markup. My IE and Netscape show the page just fine. But WebBug doesn't show anything at all except for the characters Jill noted.
Have the designer view the file in a plain old text editor. Not Word or anything like that, just a plain old vanilla text editor. There's something that is throwing the spider for a loop.
Definitely something going on in the markup. My IE and Netscape show the page just fine. But WebBug doesn't show anything at all except for the characters Jill noted.
Have the designer view the file in a plain old text editor. Not Word or anything like that, just a plain old vanilla text editor. There's something that is throwing the spider for a loop.
#6
ttw
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Posted 04 January 2005 - 01:04 PM
QUOTE(greenlightsuk @ Dec 31 2004, 09:51 AM)
One of our sites page tiltes is not appearing correctly in the Google SERPS.
G has the title listed as
< html > < head > < title > my title ...
G has the title listed as
< html > < head > < title > my title ...
I looked at the source for http://www.travel-in...y.com/home.html and can't see anything wrong. The opening tags are:
<html>
<head>
<title>chauffeur drive services, Scotland and UK</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Chauffeur driven cars for hire throughout Scotland and the UK. Graham Brit Services include chauffeur drive cars for airport transfers and executive group travel">
<link href="styles/gbs.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
</head>
<body bgcolor="C2C2CE" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0">
and the closing html and body tags are correct. Everyhing in between looks unremarkable, the HTML is actually pretty straightforward. I don' t see how the Flash component could be causing the problem.
Sorry, I can't explain why the Google SERP is so screwy.
#7
chrishirst
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Posted 04 January 2005 - 01:25 PM
Seen this before, somehow a extended unicode char gets embedded into the start of the page stream, it seems to be from the file header (maybe an ftp glitch) Doesn't show up in text editors but does when streamed off a server.
Creating a new page and a copy & paste to put the content in has fixed the problem the couple of times I've seen it become an issue.
Creating a new page and a copy & paste to put the content in has fixed the problem the couple of times I've seen it become an issue.
#8
sonnyyu
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Posted 04 January 2005 - 02:13 PM
The ÿþ have the hexadecimal code FE and FF which use for transmit Unicode.
In paragraph 5.2.1 of the W3 document called HTML Document Representation.
normally web designer/programmer and web server have different ASCII/Unicode OS/application/web server software will give this type problem.
re-open the document at web server and save back in match coding will do the trick.
Sonny Yu
In paragraph 5.2.1 of the W3 document called HTML Document Representation.
normally web designer/programmer and web server have different ASCII/Unicode OS/application/web server software will give this type problem.
re-open the document at web server and save back in match coding will do the trick.
Sonny Yu
#9
greenlightsuk
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Posted 05 January 2005 - 09:23 AM
Thanks for all the advice, but can you explain what you mean by
"save back in match coding" ?
I've no dea what that means. I'm no webmaster :-(
BTW : The bizarre characters at the start are Russian (they have a Russian version of the site)
"save back in match coding" ?
I've no dea what that means. I'm no webmaster :-(
BTW : The bizarre characters at the start are Russian (they have a Russian version of the site)
QUOTE(sonnyyu @ Jan 4 2005, 03:13 PM)
The ÿþ have the hexadecimal code FE and FF which use for transmit Unicode.
In paragraph 5.2.1 of the W3 document called HTML Document Representation.
normally web designer/programmer and web server have different ASCII/Unicode OS/application/web server software will give this type problem.
re-open the document at web server and save back in match coding will do the trick.
Sonny Yu
In paragraph 5.2.1 of the W3 document called HTML Document Representation.
normally web designer/programmer and web server have different ASCII/Unicode OS/application/web server software will give this type problem.
re-open the document at web server and save back in match coding will do the trick.
Sonny Yu
#10
OldWelshGuy
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Posted 05 January 2005 - 09:38 AM
I am wondering if there is a problem with some of these characters in the code being parsed as an instruction rather than a character? absolute stab in the dark though lol
#11
sonnyyu
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Posted 05 January 2005 - 04:24 PM
I mean by use match coding (ASCII/Unicode) web hosting OS and design application OS will save a lot of headache. In your case open the document with text editor software at web server then remove Unicode head and save back will do the trick.
#12
greenlightsuk
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Posted 06 January 2005 - 10:23 AM
So just to clarify, the bit to be removed is just the ÿþ characters
is that right?
Thanks again.
is that right?
Thanks again.
QUOTE(sonnyyu @ Jan 5 2005, 05:24 PM)
I mean by use match coding (ASCII/Unicode) web hosting OS and design application OS will save a lot of headache. In your case open the document with text editor software at web server then remove Unicode head and save back will do the trick.
#14
Raphael
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Posted 10 January 2005 - 03:35 PM
Trust me, even the most experienced of web developers can get caught out by this little problem...
Ultraedit's "Convert to <operating system>" function should fix your problem. No one's actually explained this, so if I'm permitted, I'll jot down a quick explanation of what's going on here, from Google's (and other spiders) perspective.
What happens is that the webserver sees those weird characters at the start of the page (It's already been discussed how they got there) and decides that since that's the very first thing it's found, that you don't have any <html> tags at the start. In essence, it's right.
Therefore, it throws together a very basic default HTML header set and gives that to the web browser (or search engine bot). Some web browsers are clever and they'll ignore anything they don't understand. Some are brutishly stubborn and will attempt to output anything they get. I would imagine spiders fall into the former category.
So the browser (And spider) recieves its expected HTML header (Which is the fake default one constructed by the server) and then starts displaying (or archiving) everything it finds after that...
Ultraedit's "Convert to <operating system>" function should fix your problem. No one's actually explained this, so if I'm permitted, I'll jot down a quick explanation of what's going on here, from Google's (and other spiders) perspective.
What happens is that the webserver sees those weird characters at the start of the page (It's already been discussed how they got there) and decides that since that's the very first thing it's found, that you don't have any <html> tags at the start. In essence, it's right.
Therefore, it throws together a very basic default HTML header set and gives that to the web browser (or search engine bot). Some web browsers are clever and they'll ignore anything they don't understand. Some are brutishly stubborn and will attempt to output anything they get. I would imagine spiders fall into the former category.
So the browser (And spider) recieves its expected HTML header (Which is the fake default one constructed by the server) and then starts displaying (or archiving) everything it finds after that...
#15
Jill
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Posted 10 January 2005 - 08:07 PM
Good info, Raphael, thanks! 
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