Hello!
Google explains “title branding” here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624#page-titles.
Brand your titles, but concisely. […] consider including just your site name at the beginning or end of each page title, separated from the rest of the title with a delimiter such as a hyphen, colon, or pipe […]
What they don’t explain there is that they’re notorious about adding back your Site Title (from the WordPress’s General settings) in search when you don’t include it (properly). It’s why we warn about adding it.
Do make sure that the “Site Title” input isn’t empty, and has the proper value. You can see it like the glue that keeps everything together–many themes and plugins rely on that value.
In any case, when you manually rearrange your title parts by checking the “Remove the site title” checkbox, they’re far more likely to ignore your title and replace it for you.
This warning is “blue”–which means it’s situational and informational. It’s not necessarily good or bad. But, you may face unforeseen consequences (i.e., Google ignoring your title).
However, it shouldn’t affect your ranking–Google’s goal is to give their users the information they’re looking for, and they transform your titles and descriptions to make that easier. Sometimes, they add more information, like the date a post is published, or the price of a product.
I hope this explains the lot ?? If you believe there to be an error (for instance, you did add your site title in the page title), let me know! A link to the affected page would be most helpful. Cheers!
