Google search results are mixed and titles matter

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I just had an interesting experience. I was writing an article about a recent development within my favorite niche and, about 3/4 of the way to completion, I did some research on Google. I notice my competitor had beaten me to the punch and was ranked #2 for the (exact) title I had wanted to use.

I mulled over different title options but went ahead and posted the article with my desired title. 20 minutes later I checked the rankings and found my article at #2, but more interestingly my competitor fell to spot #23.

The focus and content, and obviously the title, were the same which, to me, indicates that the top 10 results are mixed in nature. e.g. Google wants a variety of article types in the top 10, which is why my competitor got bumped right off page #1. Google wouldn't rank us both top 10 for essentially the same story(same subject and title but completely different textual copy) at the same time.

It was interesting to see the boot happen so swiftly but it's a reminder that you had better try to single out who your competition in top 10 will be for any given title and not assume all 10 articles are your competitor because they clearly are not(depending on flavor).

It also brings up the question - what If I have TWO worthy top 10 articles? Is Google ranking only one from my domain but the other (different in flavor)article could have ranked higher vs a different competitor?

With higher ranked sites getting preferential long tail keyword traffic what I saw happen tonight may actually increase between those sites. Should these sites begin writing copy specifically to single out the longtail keywords now at the risk of competing themselves out of the top 3 on other keywords?

[Mianautos]

Well it is really amazing to read about the ranking experience but i cannot say any thing that is 100% correct. it is only Google who can give you the appropriate answer.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I realize that, but the list of likely causes is short.

[tedster]

Freshness (QDF) or statistical testing arte the first two ideas the pop to mind for me. Definitely an interesting observation! Non-personalized results, I assume?

[garyr_h]

I don't think Google has liked the same titles in search results for about 6 months or more. Often when you search for a term and more than one page has the same title, you'll see their website title tagged onto the end of the URL.

For example, you search for [big red widgets]

If more than one page is titled Big Red Widgets, you see things like this:

Big Red Widgets - RedWidgetsRUs.com

Big Red Widgets - Widgets2Go.com

Before G started to do this, you could see the top 10 results with only Big Red Widgets as the titles.

Once G moved to the - Website tacked on, I started seeing much more variation in the titles and those who once saw the top 10 being pushed down to page 2 or 3.

This leads me to believe that uniqueness of titles is an indication of some sort. Since then, competitors started to change their titles to be more unique and some even gained their previous positions a while after the changes.

Furthermore, if you were going to use the exact same title as your competitor, that leads me to believe that it is something either in the news or a term which is very easy to be guessed. If it is easy to be guessed, then G probably figured it out already as well and there is some sort of indication in the SERPs to take care of that, such as the [big red widgets] example.

Your page could probably have some more on-target information with relation to the title, be fresher as tedster states, and even have more social indications sitewide to give you that ranking and push your competitor downward.

Personally, I think it's a combination of all of the above.

[tapper]

I am finding a number of old established sites fluctuating wildly at the moment from page 1 to page 16 and back again in one of my niche areas.

There is something shaking at the moment.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Non-personalized results, I assume?

Non-personalized results. This is for a search with 780,000 sites returned.

There are so many different factors at play in rankings that I can't draw any conclusions but I will add that you find out really quickly if your site has legs when you target the exact same title as someone else. Google won't show both sites in the top 10.

I have heard of title changes causing rankings penalties but I'm tempted to pick a few #3-#7 ranked articles and change their titles to see if they can rank more highly vs a different competitor in the top 10. If you cant beat the #3 site for example with a title/article could that same article conceivably rank #1 or #2 if you had picked a slightly different title? It seems plausible. Instead of changing titles it might be better to delete the existing article, redirect it to a new article with the new title...

Who would have time to do this on a keyword by keyword basis though, can you imagine writing dozens of articles just to test which title had the best results? :P

note: most highly coveted keywords have a top 10 that is extremely hard to crack and titles alone will never get you ranked, it will take backlinks, time and other factors. There is a "layer" of keywords that do get traffic which the above may actually yield results. Finding the sweet spot so to speak would not an easy task all by itself.