Google will Rewrite Page Titles for SERP

Google normally shows the webpage title as the listing title, but if the title is too short or not relative to the content, Google might rewrite the listing title to something descriptive.

Google’s John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst from Zurich, Switzerland wrote about rewriting title tags in an discussion at Google Webmaster Forums:

“In general, when we run across titles that appear to be sub-optimal, we may choose to rewrite them in the search results. This could happen when the titles are particularly short, shared across large parts of your site or appear to be mostly a collection of keywords.

One thing you can do to help prevent this is to make sure that your titles and descriptions are relevant, unique and compelling, without being ‘stuffed’ with too much boilerplate text across your site.”

What are the reasons for Google to rewrite listing titles?

1. Too short titles
2. Too long titles
3. Non-Relevant Titles
4. Missing Title Tags
5. Duplicate Title Tags

What to do to stop Google rewriting of titles?

1. Make sure each of your webpages has different and unique titles within <title></title> tag.
2. The title must be related to the content.
3. The title must be useful and descriptive
4. The title should neither be too short nor too long.

Finally, here is a video from Matt Cutts explaining a listing on Google. There are some nice tips on how to optimize a page to get an attractive SERP listing including Sitelinks and Breadcrumbs.