Google results show both hyphen-minus and em dash between page title and project name for some language projects (“Test - – Wikipedia”)
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	LucasWerkmeister
	Aug 24 2021, 10:59 PM

Description

Google search results for some languages have both a hyphen-minus and an em dash between the page title and the project name:

Screenshot 2021-08-25 at 00-46-18 test wikipedia - Google Search.png (364×667 px, 57 KB)

I assume this must be new, surely we’d have noticed if it was like this since hewiki or dewiki started using the em dash in the pagetitle interface message some fifteen years ago. I’ve informally reached out to Google, but figured it would be useful to have a Phabricator task as well, in case more people start noticing this.

So far, I’ve seen this on the following wikis:

But not on the following ones with a similar pagetitle message:

Event Timeline

LucasWerkmeister created this task.Aug 24 2021, 10:59 PM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptAug 24 2021, 10:59 PM

I have absolutely no idea which tags to add to this task, I’m afraid.

LucasWerkmeister updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 24 2021, 11:02 PM

Hi, also present on frwikipedia, but not frwiktionary, since, at least, august 18th

but tonight, it's just the contrary - so there seems to be NO logic at all

Thibaut120094 subscribed.Aug 25 2021, 11:08 AM

Apparently Google changed how they generate web page titles, I’ve left a comment on the corresponding feedback thread.

Issue still happens, no reaction from Google so far…

Update from Google (17 Sep): https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/09/more-info-about-titles

Unfortunately, the issue still happens.

Thanks, I saw that updated but neglected to post it here. Not that it’s very useful, in my humble opinion… the English thread linked there, where they “welcome further feedback”, has since been locked. The issue seems to be getting less common, but it’s definitely still happening.

Ltrlg subscribed.Oct 6 2021, 6:45 AM

I don't think this is something that can be fixed on the Wikimedia side of things?

I don’t think so, unless we have contacts at Google that we can ask to take a look I guess?

Seems like I cannot reproduce anymore with all links above, except for remaining mixed results on frrwiki:

Screenshot from 2022-02-15 00-07-04.png (587×672 px, 99 KB)

This seems unfixable on the Wikimedia side of code itself.

	F34951806: Screenshot from 2022-02-15 00-07-04.png
	Feb 14 2022, 11:09 PM

	F34619089: Screenshot 2021-08-25 at 00-46-18 test wikipedia - Google Search.png
	Aug 24 2021, 10:59 PM

	F34619102: image.png
	Aug 24 2021, 11:26 PM

	F34619100: image.png
	Aug 24 2021, 11:26 PM

	F34619104: image.png
	Aug 24 2021, 11:26 PM

Google results show both hyphen-minus and em dash between page title and project name for some language projects (“Test - – Wikipedia”)Closed, InvalidPublicActions

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Google results show both hyphen-minus and em dash between page title and project name for some language projects (“Test - – Wikipedia”)
Closed, InvalidPublic
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