What's up with the `- <string>` in Google search result

What's up with the `- ` in Google search result - Google Search Console is a free application that allows you to identify, troubleshoot, and resolve any issues that Google may encounter as it crawls and attempts to index your website in search results. If you’re not the most technical person in the world, some of the errors you’re likely to encounter there may leave you scratching your head. We wanted to make it a bit easier, so we put together this handy set of tips about google, google-search, title, to guide you along the way. Read the discuss below, we share some tips to fix the issue about What's up with the `- ` in Google search result.Problem :

I recently did a google search of an article I wrote and this is what I see:

If I am not wrong the string behind - should be the title of the original website, which is never "v1.0".

Actually, nowhere in my website did I indicate that "v1.0" is the title or anything significant.

<title>0a explains: Calculus (with pics and gifs)</title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<meta name="keywords" content="0a, Calculus, Differentiation, Integration">
<meta name="author" content="Archy Wilhes">
<meta name="description" content="Calculus explained with pics and gifs. Written in possibly (hopefully) the most comprehensible way for anyone who is new to limit, differentiation and integration. ">

It just happened to be the first string of characters in the website besides my logo which is a png.

<div class="logo inline">
<img src="assets/img/0a.png">
<div class="version">v1.0</div>
</div>

So is there a way to change it to something else? All I can think of is doing a bit of "hack" like putting a display-none string in front of v.10.

Solution :

Thats kinda strange. Im assuming its because v1.0 is the first words on the page and because you put the string inside of a logo div. Normally Google would pull the fallback/alt/title site name from that logo div innards. Since you have no alt+title on the img, its using the next div assuming its in text logo fallback. Google uses class/id names in a manner similar to how it uses Schema.org. Maybe just changing the class from "version" to something else would help. If it doesn't, you could try wrapping the "logo" div in another more general one called something like "mid" and splitting "version" out of "logo" div.

You can also try making titles longer to boot the dynamic string(s) off the SERP widget. Here is how long that title would be at 60 chars 0a explains: Calculus (with pics and gifs) - 123456789012345

If the issue about google, google-search, title, is resolved, there’s a good chance that your content will get indexed and you’ll start to show up in Google search results. This means a greater chance to drive organic search traffic to your site.