What in the Heck is Going On With my Dealer.com sites in Google SRP's?????

[Rick Buffkin]

Guys, I checked again today (site: (search) ) and it's still got all these other dealers Dealership info in the page titles and descriptions. I have a case (08722297) open at DDC and they are looking into it. Right now I'm kinda loosing a little bit of faith in DDC. I'm curious as to how long this has been going on.

 

[Alexander Lau]

Guys, I checked again today (site: (search) ) and it's still got all these other dealers Dealership info in the page titles and descriptions. I have a case (08722297) open at DDC and they are looking into it. Right now I'm kinda loosing a little bit of faith in DDC. I'm curious as to how long this has been going on.

That's fairly silly, if you were to ask me. I'd be barking very loudly if I were you. Those pages are indexed and even if they have updated their db, how long is it going to take the bots to re-index? Ask them that, are they going to do it for you?

 

[craigh]

I would be diving into Webmaster Tools to start correcting as soon as the sitemap is corrected (if it's wrong).
Get the indexes updated as best you can.

Are these real pages with bad meta or are they actually bad page content as well?

 

[Rick Buffkin]

I literally just got off the phone with another DDC support rep (had to explain a (site: Search) again ) and we checked 2 other DDC sites as well (I picked one and he randomly picked one) and their page titles and descriptions was jacked up to! Everything was going good until he said that Google sometimes indexs the wrong page titles. I understand that if I maybe change a page title on our site and google may prefer to maybe keep the old title for a short spell for some reason BUT.... The page title shouldn't show a completely different freaking dealership!!!!!! This is crazy man!!

 

[Ryan Everson]

What happens if you manually resubmit those pages to Google Search Console (formerly known as webmaster tools)? That will cause Google to re-crawl the pages and most likely resolve your issue because the actual title tags on your site are correct now.

 

[craigh]

They must have had a global issue at one point that nobody noticed long enough that they all got indexed..
OR there's something really wonky going on with how the sites are being reported to Google.

A couple things I observed:

1. Bing does not have this issue - I can't even find these results if I try on Bing (explicitly adding cities from your screenshot)
   
   
2. This is not a meta tag issue, this is a website issue. When Google cached your site, it cached Copeland Toyota and knew it was Copeland Toyota (for example): http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...com/parts/index.htm+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca
   
   
3. I cannot work this backwards. For example, if I search for "copeland toyota beaman -copelandtoyota.com" I don't get anyone else's sites

So, the way I see it, Google thinks those results *are* Copeland Toyota.
When you click 'View Cache' the results actually show their domain, not yours, even though the cache URL is for your site.

As a website vendor, I will keep my thoughts to myself

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...htm?type=testdrive+&cd=18&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c.../index.htm?start=0+&cd=23&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

 

[Rick Buffkin]

I just had a rep from DDC to call me back. A diff one. (Yes, I had to explain to him how to do the Site: Search). We chatted for a few mins so he could get more documentation about the case. He did some test while we were on the phone and could see it as well. Hung up and he called me back within 10 mins. He confirmed there is a page title issue with Google and the Developers alot further up the ladder at DDC are aware of it. It doesn't affect all of DDC's sites. Currently, they do not have a solution for it! He did say he was told that the pages don't show up in standard Google search. From my understanding, a (Site search operator's function is to show you everything that Google has indexed for that specific URL you enter into it. If it's an indexed webpage that shows up using that search operator, how can it NOT show up in a standard search???

 

[Alex Snyder]

I just got word that the highest levels at Dealer.com are becoming aware of the issue :thumbup:

Thanks for posting Rick. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a thread like this to get results. But that's what DealerRefresh is for!

 

[Bob George]

Hey everyone, Dealer.com Web Products here. As Alex says we are not only aware, but have been digging in for the last couple weeks across our Engineering and SEO teams. This one is definitely proving tricky as so far everything we've investigated indicates we're sending the correct meta data and markup to Google. That said, we have some theories and are meeting as a team tomorrow first thing (several folks have already been digging in deeper this weekend). Please stay tuned as we will report back ASAP. Thank you and please don't hesitate to reach out directly to me.

Bob George
Sr. Director of Products, Dealer.com
[email protected]

 

[craigh]

I think the biggest hint is these web caches.
They're not caching the right site, so the meta tags are likely a symptom of the fact that Google somehow indexed the wrong sites under the wrong domains.

Never seen anything like it in my life and there are very few reports online.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-cache-canonicalize-21521.html
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/j9IsLuQd3v8


If what I'm reading is accurate, this is only supposed to happen when Google deems multiple sites to have the same content, it only caches one of them because they're all "the same".

I noticed almost every page I saw with this issue is a generic page (parts, service, video gallery) and they all have nearly identical markup, very similar content, identical URLs, etc.