Branded terms CTR drop

[Algorhythm_jT]

Moz Hivemind,

I'm working with an ecom beauty brand and retailer who re-platformed their website at the end of August last year. Their CTR dropped from 70% plus for branded terms to 50% over night and has steadily declined ever since, down to the low 30s as an average the last few months.

Their rankings for branded terms have remained in the number 1 position, despite a slight blip at launch, which is to be expected.

They admit that some new distribution deals with major retailers have added some competition to the mix, but much later in the year.

I could totally understand a rankings drop and an initial hit, but has anyone seen anything like this before, is there something on the new site that could impact CTR like this, either in the SERPs or perhaps a reporting issue?

As the click itself is taking place in the SERP and their rankings are solid, other than the meta description, which they swear was unchanged the first few months after launch, any ideas what could be happening here?

Thanks so much.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Yes, first lesson: don't anchor text spam your site in comments like these as it's pretty obvious you tried to score a link with this comment. So stop doing that and focus on creating actual value.

[Algorhythm_jT]

Thanks everyone, all good answers, Title tags I will take a look at, but shouldn't have changed a great deal if at all... but the devil is in the detail.

Branded search ppc will definitely have played a part as well, including their own activity.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Do they have any insights from Google Ads on their branded keyword campaigns? That would usually be my first guess, somebody started bidding on their brand keywords which would take at least 10% away likely from your regular organic clicks by just pushing it down the page.

[EGOL]

Go to archive.org to see your old title tags.

[Nozzle]

They swear the meta descriptions were unchanged, what about the title tags?

[EGOL]

Your SERP CTR can drop when Google changes the SERP interface.  They can slap more images, ads, videos, "people also ask" , news and various types of rubbish that absorb the clicks before your organic rankings are seen.    Competitors above or below you could start adding kickass prices, free shipping, or free beer to their title tags.

.... but, my usual suspicion is that the developers monkeyed with something.