SERP Drop overnight for one of our domains - could it be the title changes?

[xoffie]

Hi

Scratching our heads here over SERP drop for some of our product pages, Although they are all uniquely titled with the product name, we have recently added 4 words at the end of our title, like a slogan which are repeated on every one of our product pages.

However, we've also seen a drop, but not as far, on related category pages, these have unique titles.

When we talk about "unique title" being important for SEO, does that mean 0 reptition between page titles? I see many companies use their site name in the title (even here see | SEOMOZ Q&A - would four words at the end of a title do this?

Or am i barking up the wrong tree entirely? Ive seen so much movement over the past few weeks its hard to correlate anything we do with the result, so even after advise I think i'll wait a week

[BenRWoodard]

I'm seeing a lot of movement on my client's ecommerce site as well.  Mainly I've seen my homepage drop from rankings that it never really was purposed for and product pages are staying strong if I optimized and have supporting content for that keyword.  There are a few exceptions but not many.

I have been adding the name of the company (3 words) after the product name on some products and it doesn't seem to be effecting my rankings at all.  It's something I do if my product title is really short.  I feel if a user sees a two word title in the SERPs they won't take you seriously.

What is the slogan's purpose?  Are you using it as a ranking factor or to help the end user?

[xoffie]

Hi

No the slogan isnt for ranking factors its to try to improve the CTR, so staiting how strong pricing is (as it actually is as this site is a comparison model)

[BenRWoodard]

My conclusion would be to look elsewhere and as you said, sit back and watch them closely.  Maybe some linked sites got hit hard and lost their weight in Google over the last week with this latest algorithm change and it indirectly effected your product pages.