Hi @sdagency ,
Thanks for the kind words, and I’m happy to help clear this up!
Good news first: based on what you’re describing, AIOSEO is doing exactly what it should. The fact that the AIOSEO Details column shows the full title (page/post title + separator + site title) tells us the title tag AIOSEO is generating and sending to search engines is correct and complete.
What you’re seeing is on Google’s end, not your settings.
Why Google sometimes drops the site title
Google doesn’t have to use the SEO title and description you provide, and never has. They take what you provide as a suggestion and return what they think is the best, most relevant title for the term being searched. This process is completely automated, and you can’t force them to display the exact title you set. Common reasons they trim or rewrite a title include it being too long for the available space (so the site title at the end gets dropped), Google deciding a shorter title better matches the query, or Google pulling from other on-page signals like your main heading.
This is why you’re seeing Bing show the full title while Google sometimes doesn’t. Each search engine handles title display differently, and Google is the more aggressive one about rewriting. It happens to every site and every SEO plugin.
We have an article that explains this here: https://aioseo.com/docs/why-doesnt-the-title-and-description-i-set-appear-in-search-results/
Google’s own documentation on it:
Google also made a change to how they generate titles back in August 2021, which is when a lot of folks first noticed this. Their announcement is here: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/08/update-to-generating-page-titles
How to confirm AIOSEO is outputting the right title
You can verify the actual title tag your site sends out:
- Open one of the affected pages on your live site.
- Right-click and choose View Page Source (or press Ctrl+U / Cmd+Option+U).
- Search the source for
<title>.
You should see the full title there, separator and site title included. If it’s correct in the page source, the plugin is doing its job and the rest is up to Google.
A couple of things that can nudge Google toward keeping your site title
While you can’t force Google to use your exact title, you can make it more likely:
- Keep titles reasonably short. If the page title plus separator plus site title runs long, Google is more likely to trim the end. Keep the important words near the front.
- Make sure each title is unique and clearly describes the page. Generic or near-duplicate titles are more likely to get rewritten.
You can preview the title length right in the AIOSEO snippet editor on each page or post (the Edit Snippet preview under the post’s AIOSEO settings shows roughly how it’ll appear in search).
So nothing is broken here, and you don’t need to change your Search Appearance settings. Google’s display choices tend to fluctuate over time too, so you may see the full title come back on its own for some pages.
If you view the page source and the site title is actually missing from the <title> tag, let me know and we’ll dig in further, since that would point to something different.
I hope this helps. Thanks!
