Changing page title and effect on rankings

Silly question I know...

[crobb305]

I have not changed my main page title in 6 months. During that time I have seen my keyword rankings climb steadily, especially after the last update. Does anyone know if Google likes consistent titles and might changing my title (keeping the same words, just shuffling them around) cause my keyword rankings to suffer?

[topr8]

page title is very important, especially for the maintaining a theme with linked pages (IMO)

google also favours updated content .... hence fresh tags,

i think changing the title will absolutely have an effect (even just shuffling the words) but i don't feel longevity of the title is a factor, more the positioning of the words.

[martinibuster]

Also, perhaps even more importantly, are the page titles of the pages linking into your main page from your inner pages. They help to define what that page is about.

[steveb]

I changed my title by adding one word, and I shot up 20 slots for a two word phrase involving that new word and my main keyword.

I don't know about valuing cosistency (that could be called staleness), but Google values relevance. That is a more important considertion, IMO.

On the other hand, shuffling the words will matter, and there is no way of knowing if it will be good or bad. Obviously you can always change them back though.

[thejenn]

If you had a great title to begin with, it may be that you are continuing to rise as others edit their titles (maybe making them worse) or as the filters drop out sites that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

I've found that the sites that I've done best tend to have a fairly steady rise up the rankings without much tweaking.

Congrats on doing it right the first time! :)