Ever notice that the same page ranked in Google & Yahoo sometimes have a different title listed in the search results pages? You know, the blue link that shows the title of the site... One member at HighRankings brought up this question, otherwise I would never have thought to write about it here.

Steps for example:
1) Search at Google on rustybrick
2) Search at Yahoo on rustybrick
3) Look at Google's title for RustyBrick "Web Design, Web Development & Web Services New York, NY"

4) Look at Yahoo!'s title for RustyBrick "RustyBrick Web Construction"

5) Notice "Category: Internet Consulting" link under the RustyBrick result in Yahoo! Search.

That is right, since RustyBrick is included in the Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Search uses the title listed in the directory instead of the title in the source code of rustybrick.com, which is what Google uses. Plus Yahoo! also used the description in the directory and not the meta description of the contents of the page.

This is only the case when the page is listed in the directory, inner pages that are not listed in the Yahoo! directory will come up with the title found in the page source.

Update: Yahoo! has now added support for the NOYDIR tag, more details here.

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