Big G playing around with Title tag changes on organic listings?

say what?

google is changing the title of your pages in the serps?

Never noticed it yet, but I'll see if I find some of my titles changes by Google

If you are changing the title of post in wordpress make sure you are doing the same for the all in one seo plugin below the post or whatever plugin you use for the same purpose.

Can anyone point to a specific example?

Not so far to me. I have an EMD site that crashed and burned on primary keywords that were included in the domain but recently its fortunes are reviving in unexpected ways. For instance "Fortuner 2014" page was strong in SERPs before the decline now what I'm seeing is that this particular page which is on Toyota Fortuner 2014 is being displayed in search results for Innova 2014, hilux 2014, Prado 2014 and Landcruiser 2014. It is still displaying my original title but displaying in those searches.

So titles are not changing but net results is what you describe so perhaps there is some truth to it, perhaps a side effect of some algo change. EMD curse has a hidden blessing in disguise as an Easter Egg. Thanks for pointing out though will be on lookout for this.

Just a few things to note my fellow warriors...

One, my site is not wordpress; two, it's not EMD.

Lastly, @UMS - I'd love to show an example, but then I'd be giving a way the farm LOL!

I've told people on this forum before, changing text on a page can sometimes bump a page up the SERPs. See that text above my forum avatar (Dynamic SEO).

When you change the text on a page to new text that is very relevant (not exact same keyword, but very similar) Google will rank that page for both keywords.

The only thing I can figure is, Googles servers aren't all in sync.

If you take 1 keyword & add that keyword to the end of the page title on say 50 relevant internal pages, let all the pages sit for a week or so. Google SERPs will show all the pages indexed with that keyword in the title.

Next, take those same exact 50 pages (or whatever) & change that 1 keyword in the page title for all pages. Within 1 week you should start seeing all those pages with the SERP title updated (new keyword in SERP title).

Next, you should see both keywords ranked (assumes the first keyword was ranked), not all 50 pages, but at least 1 page ranked in the SERPs (1 page, ranked for two keywords).

Now bump that up to 3-4 keywords/weeks & repeat...

Here's the interesting part, I've found that even If my first keyword stops ranking my page in the SERPs, If I revert back to the original keyword, it usually comes right back in the same or very close to the original ranked SERP position.

I don't do this for my best keywords, I'm careful with those, but you can still test this on a batch of relevant internal pages for your keywords. It's kinda fun once you get the hang of swapping out relevant keywords. It's like mini keyword blast.

Googles a freak about relevancy, they love that stuff, lol.

Also, obviously competition plays a roll in ranking any page.

I know google will shorten a title tag on you if they think it's to long or uses the main keyword to much.

Google shortens title tag for certain keywords | SEOmoz Q&A