Did I..........

[binny]

....destroy my search ranking on a site by changing the Meta tags?

I had a site ranking 2nd & 8th on Google for a couple of phrases on which I changed the Meta tags then a few days later it's outta sight on page 11 or thereabouts

Could changing Meta tags have had that much of an effect?

 

[ScottJ]

Depends on how fragile your ranking was.
Title & Description do still have a little weight but more likely to be unrelated to that unless you removed the keywords totally, you do get irregular large swings on domains with weak backlinks.

 

[stevebrowne]

keep an eye on it as it could also bounce back again. When Google sees changes on well ranked pages it can drop them lower for a few days.

 

[binny]

It's back to where it was, I think I'm going to be more careful with changing them in future

it has no backlinks so it probably is a fragile ranking

 

[paul]

why do people worry so much about meta tags

I don't even use them (the title tag is not a meta tag btw)

Build a site with content, add a relevant title in the title tag, then get some links. Forget about bloody meta tags

 

[ratboy]

never used meta tags and always rank high...

 

[SIMONR85]

metatags are useless IMO unless you want to rank well on a search engine that nobody uses.

My rankings have been going up and down lately but thats just the way google is. Give it a few days and if things havent straightened out then its problem solving time