To prevent and avoid magnetic loss caused by magnetite core phase transitions involved in high-temperature crystallization of sol-gel TiO2, a direct and feasible low-temperature crystallization technique was developed to deposit anatase TiO2 nanoparticle shell on Fe3O4 sphere cores. To promote the photocatalytic efficiency of the obtained core-shell Fe3O4@TiO2 magnetic photocatalyst, uniformly distributed Au nanoparticles (NPs) were successfully immobilized on the core-shell Fe3O4@TiO2 spheres via a seed-mediated growth procedure. The 3 nm Au colloid absorbed on Fe3O4@TiO2 served as a nucleation site for the growth of Au NPs overlayer. The morphology, structure, composition and magnetism of the resulting composites were characterized, and their photocatalytic activities were also evaluated. In comparison to Fe3O4@TiO2, Fe3O4@TiO2-Au exhibited higher photocatalytic activity for organic degradation under UV irradiation. This enhanced mechanism may have resulted from efficient charge separation of photogenerated electrons and holes due to the Au NPs attached on the TiO2. In addition, the composites possessed superparamagnetic properties with a high saturation magnetization of 44.6 emu g(-1) and could be easily separated and recycled by a magnet. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.