Search Engine Optimisation for Title Tag & How it works & How it is crawled by Google, A lesson learned from my own portfolio website

Here is what I learned from Google’s Web Crawling algorithm over the years,

 
For last three to two years I was using just ‘Design Portfolio | Mandar Apte’ as my title tag for my personal design portfolio website’s homepage i.e ‘Page Name | Website Name’. Nothing more than that to explain the people to give them full insight of website by just looking at title on google’s search result’s page.

 
But for last few days I was getting this result when I searched my name on Google, Yes I was listed first when I searched for name i.e mandar apte,

 
But result was something like this, ‘Mandar Apte: Design Portfolio’ instead my curated title ‘Design Portfolio | Mandar Apte’. It seems google altered my website homepage’s title tag on their search results. I was amassed why should this happen, then I contacted google support for the same…

 

 
& I got this answer from them…

 
Google Web Search / Web Master Support Team: ‘The title of a search result is generally taken from the contents of the <title> tag for that page, which is the text that you see in the title bar of your browser. Sometimes, such as when the <title> tag is not meaningful or the page is not crawlable, Google may generate a different title in search results using other information such as the anchor text of a link to that page or the Open Directory Project. A useful title is a short description of the page, and is unique on each page of your site. For example, a page on your site containing contact information may use the title ‘Contact information – My Company’ while a page listing your products may be called ‘Products by My Company.’

 
More Use full links Here:
more advice on how to create good titles and descriptions,

 
Read Google’s blog post about page titles

 
Result & Conclusion

 

 
I seems google do itself with tricks to alter your page titles if it doesn’t have enough information to display,

 
So now I have updated my title tag with my skill sets & my business location & it goes something like this: ‘Design Portfolio | Mandar Apte – Graphic, Web & Animation Film Designer from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.’

 
& it seems this tag has been accepted by Google Search Algorythems with out any funny or usefull alterations by them… & my new title tag has been reflected on web too…

 
Hope this web note helps new Google Webmasters.

 
Thanks & Regards
Mandar Apte