Does daily changing of price information in a title tag damage SEO?

Marketing
1

Hi

I’m thinking about changing the title tag for all my pages daily, updating it with the most current price information. (As I think this could improve CTR) All the other keywords in the title tag would remain the same however.

Does anyone think this is likely to cause a problem with regards to ranking in Google and other search engines?

Thanks for any / all replies!

Cheers

2

I’m not too sure, but I really cannot see Google really caring if I’m honest with you. If it’ll improve your CTR then I’d go for that over any silly SEO quibble any time.

3

Although Google does crawl and index sites quickly, correct me if I’m wrong, but it still takes a day or two for them to cache the page, doesn’t it? So if you’re changing the title tag daily, it’s not going to matter because by the time Google caches it, you’ll have already changed it.

4

If you’re changing just the price within the title and keeping the rest the same, such as the product name, I can’t see it hurting your SEO effort. Now if you go changing the entire title daily, that’s another story.

If it’ll improve your CTR then I’d go for that over any silly SEO quibble any time.

Agreed.

5

Thanks for the replies.
Ignoring the detrimental user experience - What about any side effects from having an out-of-date price indexed in google, so that when the user arrives, the price is slightly different?
I don’t expect google will update my page title in their index daily (?)
Do you think Google might penalise my site in such a situation?

Therefore i’m considering using a phrase such as ‘From Around $X’ in the title, as prices do change but do not vary wildly…

Any thoughts?

Cheers

6

If you’ve got a busy enough site, then Google will be updating your prices daily or near daily. I guess it depends on the value that your particular site has to Google.

You could place a phrase in the title but I would be careful because I suspect having the price at the very beginning of the title is the point here. To bury the price 3 words in dilutes the effect. Maybe place a prominent disclaimer on the site that indicates prices are subject to change daily. As long as the price is correct on the website when they’re viewing the product, I think you’ll be okay.

7

The biggest danger is that the price shown in Google’s results page is out of sync with the actual price. If the SERP is showing a higher price, you might not attract as many customers. If it’s showing a lower price, you might get people unhappy that the price is higher than they had been led to believe. I would probably try to avoid changing it daily for that reason, because there will always be a lag between changing it and Google updating its index.

8

Hi Stevie,

Thanks for the reply, what d’you think about using a generalisation in the page title, e.g.
buy X product from around $X

Alternatively, what about putting price information in the meta description, either specifically, or in a ‘from around’ general way…?