Fixed horrible title tag on home page, and lost ranking. Will it come back?

[bizzer]

I was helping out someone on their site and its home page ranked on page 2 for their term, and the title tag was horrible. It was 160 characters long with lots of near repetitive keywords ([keyword] - adjective [keyword] - adjective [keyword] - adjective [keyword] etc.) -- typical title that Google would penalize when it got around to it.

So I created a title that made sense, for the keyword, and that followed the best practices of Google recommendations.  Now it's dropped off the index. (EDIT: sorry, still in index, just not even in top 1000)

Is this something I should not have done?  I was just trying to keep them from getting slammed.

And, how long should I expect it to take to get my ranking back?

This is the only page title I changed.

[inhouseseo]

Changing the title tag is not something that would cause that page to drop off the index. A fewof questions:

1. Has the site lost rankings for other pages?

2. Has anything else been done that might have an impact on rankings (i.e adding links, removing links)?

3. When you paste the URL in Google, does it come up as the first search result? If so, it was not dropped from the index.

4. Is the keywords still at the beginning of the title tag?

5. Is there another page on the site that now ranks for the site? You may have more than one page on the site targeting the same keyword.

[bizzer]

1. Has the site lost rankings for other pages?

I don't think so.

2. Has anything else been done that might have an impact on rankings (i.e adding links, removing links)?

Nothing else has been changed.

3. When you paste the URL in Google, does it come up as the first search result? If so, it was not dropped from the index.

Yes.

4. Is the keywords still at the beginning of the title tag?

Yes.

5. Is there another page on the site that now ranks for the site? You may have more than one page on the site targeting the same keyword.

No

[inhouseseo]

Based on what you answered:

I would ask the site owner about question one. He should have a firm idea of other ranking drops or possible penalties. What other sites are doing is also a factor, but I don't see how a page would drop off the index due to title tag modification.

I have seen pages move up and down by tweaking the title tag. In my experience, when you make the title tag cleaner and less repetitive, the page ranks better. Even if it were to move down, it would not drop off the index. That seems bizarre!

But, I am speculating without knowing the site or keyword the page is ranking for.

[Adam.Whittles]

I'd have to agree that doing what you have done should not have impacted the rankings so dramatically. I have seen minor fluctuations when modifying title tags but not to this extent. I would give it a few days to see if things settle down. If you stil see the same problems after a few days then I would suggest that something else is likely the cause of the dramatic drop in rankings.

[bizzer]

"it would not drop off the index"

My apologies, I did say that but I meant it dropped off the rankings, not even in top 1000 now) I edited my question now to be more accurate.

[bizzer]

Interesting that in DuckDuckGo.com and StartPage.com it is showing with the new title wording, and in increased position (#3 on DuckDuckGo.com).  Still not up there in google.

Any idea if this means anything?