Hi Robert,
Changing the title is almost certainly the reason. You probably
noticed in the search results for pepper spray, almost every site in
the top 30 has the keywords in the title. Having only those two
keywords in the title would have been a major factor for your #3
position.
There is a good chance everything will be back to normal in a day or
two. Next to your listing in the results is the date Jan 8 2003. This
means that you were picked up by Google's Freshbot. It is highly
likely that it will look at your site again today or tomorrow, and
with your title tag changed back, that would right things.
Here's a comment from WebMasterWorld, which I highly recommend
visiting regularly (free registration required).
I just did a search for Mount Widget This State where the state name
is spelled out in full and consists of two words. The third ranked
site (out of 46,700 matches) had PR of 2 and basically no text (four
photos, all as widgetN.jpg, no ALT).
How did it get there? Both the title and the H2 tag were precisely the
string "Mount Widget, This State". The site which had two pages in
positions 1 and 2 had a longer title, but it included these four words
in that order (separated by other words).
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/6581.htm
The easiest way to experiment with rankings in search results is to
change the title tag of pages which have a low ranking - so you can't
do much harm. If Google visits once a month, change it once a month
(Google visits once a day, change it once a day) until it does well
for the keywords you choose. However, if you are already #3, most
webmasters wisely don't change a thing.
Search strategy: personal experience
I hope this answers your question - feel free to ask for clarification
on any part of my answer.
Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga |
