Why Google Displays Different Metadata for the Same Page | Friday SEO Tip

Today’s Friday SEO Tip is brought to you by Brandon Ho, one of BSM’s Senior Project Managers. In the video above, Brandon talks about a question he received from a client regarding site links.

When the client searched for one of their branded keywords—a search term containing some variation of the company’s name or specific product—they noticed that one of the site links that appeared on the SERP was no longer an existing page. They had removed it from the site and provided a 301 redirect; however, Google still recognized it and even promoted it because it remained on the site map. To keep the site link from appearing on the SERP, Brandon instructed them to remove it from their site map entirely.

The client also noticed that the title and description appearing under their home page for the branded keyword differed from the metadata that appeared under the home page for one of their targeted keyword phrases. In the video above, Brandon explains that Google displays the title and description it deems most relevant to the page for the query in question. This means the same page can appear with different metadata.

Brandon advised the client to tweak the title and description to reflect what Google chose to display as an alternative. Of course, there are no guarantees that the search engine giant will use the same titles and descriptions across the board. While you can certainly play around with them, Google may still generate its own metadata for specific queries. Unfortunately, this is just one of those aspects of search that we don’t have 100% control over; however, it doesn’t hurt to try to influence what you can!