Positions dropping in SERPs after Title and Snippet change
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
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.
-
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
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Competitor Title, can I use the same???
there are some pages, my competitor is ranking well and also, we have done page optimization it is 100% for page title keywords as im going to use the same title of the competitor? Will this affect me? Pls suggest wht should I do..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
Title in serch result
Hi, Im the webmaster of http://www.canexel.es and we are having some problems with the title of the home page. this is my title tag: <title></span><span>Casas de madera mucho más que casas prefabricadas - Canexel</span><span class="webkit-html-tag"></title> This what apear in SERPS in keywords like casas de madera (google esp): Canexel: Casas de madera mucho más que casas prefabricada...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Canexel0 -
Why is Google rewriting titles with the brandname @ the front followed with a conon " : " i.e. > Brandname: the rest of the title
Example: https://www.google.nl/search?q=providercheck.nl&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&ei=9xUCUuH6DYPePYHSgKgJ&fp=96e0b845c2047734&q=www.providercheck.nl&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=X&spell=1&ved=0CC4QBSgA Look @ the first result: www.providercheck.nl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zanox0 -
How to find all of a website's SERPs?
Was wondering how easiest to find all of a website's existing SERPs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Can changing dynamic url of over 2000 pages site after a year will change its ranking
Hi- Have built site in joomla The urls are dynamic in nature with over a year - all pages are well indexed and backlinks been built over with these dynamic urls Need to know if i hire an agency to change over dynamic url to static url of these 2000 pages - will it also change all Search engine ranking positions of existing urls Will all the seo effort and backlinks build over 15 months will still hold valid or this will just back to square one due to change of urls is it advisable to get the url changed from dynamic to static one - especially when site is receiving over 75,000 visitors every month Thanks in advance. Look for expert suggestions
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Changing Servers + Effect on SEO
Hi, I am currently with a very slow server. Our website takes quite a while to load, FTP is very slow and content changes with Wordpress are slow because even the database connection takes a lot of time. However, my website ranks very well. Traffic has doubled in the last year. Our domain has been registered with this company for over 10 years. I am wondering if changing to a different hosting provider would have an effect on my rankings due to the change in IP.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MangoMan160 -
Site dropped rankings when changing host from US to Spain
My site was ranked very well in the UK & US for multiple keywords but we changed hosting from the US to Spain and since then the rankings in the US & UK have dropped between 5 to 35 positions on all keywords and are showing no signs of returning 3 weeks later. What can be causing this? The site was down for about 3 to 5 hours a few days before we transferred hosting (this is why we changed hosting due to the previous hosting being down too often). It does seem as though the new location of the hosting server seems to be affecting rankings but I need confirmation on this or any other ideas why the rankings may have dropped. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | authoritysitebuilder0 -
Changing my url name? Should I do it?
Hi, I am targeting a brand called Creative Recreation, who are a trainers brand. We currently rank ok-ish for certain terms for Creative Recreation Trainers, Footwear and Creative Recreation [INSERT STYLE NAME HERE]. Our main search term I think we would like to improve on is "creative recreation trainers" as we are 6th for this. Our domain name points to the brands page as designerboutique-online.com/all-clothing/creative-recreation/ Now what I want to know is, would it be worthwhile or would it affect my current rank/index if I changed the end of that url to read /creative-recreation-trainers/ thus getting the keyword phrase in the url? Creative-Recreation is a hard one to crack as you have a lot of competition from the brands site etc.. Any ideas on this? Cheers Will
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0