Positions dropping in SERPs after Title and Snippet change

[RWW]

Hi!

I switched to a better title and meta description today for our page. Instead of ranking us better and displaying the new title - google let us fall from Position 10 to Position 16 (still dip laying the old title and meta description). Why is that? (I only changed it for the homepage)

Cheers

Marc

[RWW]

Hi Zoe,

thanks a lot for your reply.

I checked the ranking position through pws=0 and also by Moz's Ranktracker. In Moz it showed up ok but with &pws=0 it seemed to have dropped over several positions.

Please see my response to Cyrus if you're interested in what might have caused the drop.

I did not know that Google does not update meta data in real time.

Thank you very much !

Marc

[RWW]

Hi Cyrus,

thanks for your detailed answer. As I found out the main cause was human stupidity

I just saw that somehow Wordpress did not publish the changes unless I deleted the cache in WP. Thereafter the homepage looked kind of destroyed because of a false setting in WP. Maybe this might have caused the drop although the page looked ok to me before deleting the cache...

Thank you very much.

I took learned a lot from your posting!

Marc

[Cyrus-Shepard]

There are a few possible reasons Google might adjust rankings after seeing a change in your title and meta descriptions. Among them: (keep in mind these are only possibilities)

1. The algorithm determines that the page is less relevant to the target query keywords

2. The title change deviates from earlier anchor text pointing at the page, meaning the page might not be as relevant to the query

3. Over-optimization

4. After changing your title+description, you experience a lower CTR in search results. In theory this could lower your rankings. But because you describe the old title/description still showing in SERPS, this is less likely

5. The drop in rankings is temporary, or is unrelated to any changes you made.

If Google is still showing the old title/description, #5 is a strong possibility. You may want to check Google's cache of the page to see if it's picking up on the changes. Depending on the site this can take anywhere from a few hours to several weeks.

If nothing else, you can always change the title/description back to the original version and test what happens.

[ZoeRigley]

Hi,

How are you checking the rankings? Through looking at the SERP, or through a tool like Moz? If it's just been changed today, I'd say this is probably coincidence, depending on what you've changed it to. Google doesn't update meta data in real time, and so you'll probably not see a change for a couple of hours-up to a week, depending on how often Google re-indexes your site.

This is more likely to be caused by something else, from the sound of it!

Hope this helps, 
Zoe