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The traffic of my website, which is over 4 years old, has plummeted due to a Google update. I want to revise the website title and meta description. Will the site be affected?

yes you can change it, but this is not what will make your website recover!

meta tags are not the reason for websites tanking... or rather, they're not the sole reason I should say. They are one of the many minor details that need to be taken care of when doing on-site SEO, but they're rarely responsible for sites losing rankings. And besides, google is re-writing those tags anyway a lot of times, so yeah... I would not focus on meta tags

If your site lost rankings (due to recent google updates most likely), the issues are elsewhere (usually with content or backlinks). Nowadays - since AI is the latest craze - probably that your content was poor, or 100% AI, or a mix of both...

alec5 said:

The traffic of my website, which is over 4 years old, has plummeted due to a Google update. I want to revise the website title and meta description. Will the site be affected?

Click to expand...

Modifying website titles and meta descriptions may have an impact on your website traffic, especially after Google algorithm updates. These changes can help improve SEO performance, attract more user clicks, and potentially increase traffic. However, if the new title and description do not match the user's search intent or are not attractive enough, it may actually lead to further traffic decline. Therefore, it is recommended to carefully consider the selection of keywords and user experience when making modifications.

alec5 said:

The traffic of my website, which is over 4 years old, has plummeted due to a Google update. I want to revise the website title and meta description. Will the site be affected?

Click to expand...

I know how frustrating and disheartening it to watch your traffic drop after years of hard work.
Updating your website’s title and meta description won’t magically fix everything. It only help to improve click-through rates.
But also check content quality, relevance, or backlinks profile.

As mentioned above, Google quite often re-writes descriptions so revising titles and descriptions will have no effect on your rankings.
The problem lies somewhere else.

Updating your website’s title and meta description is safe and can help recover traffic after a Google update. Ensure each title is unique, keyword-rich, and accurately reflects the page, keeping it under 60 characters. Write compelling meta descriptions under 160 characters to encourage clicks. Focus on user intent and relevance. Monitor changes in Google Search Console to measure performance. Combined with quality content and clean backlinks, these updates can improve visibility and click-through rates over time.

Revising your website's title and meta description after a Google update can improve click-through rates, but ensure they're relevant and optimized to avoid further ranking issues.

Revising your site’s meta title and description is a low-risk, medium-reward strategy that can recover 10% to 20% of lost traffic by improving click-through rate and user intent alignment, but it’s not a complete solution to the impact of the Google update. Your four-year-old site’s traffic drop could stem from content, EEAT, technical, or backlink issues, and requires a comprehensive recovery plan. Strategically optimize meta tags, update content to align with 2025 standards, fix technical SEO issues, and clean/build backlinks to maximize your chances of recovering traffic. You can leverage tools like GSC, Yoast SEO, and Ahrefs, and consider using Google Reviews for trust signals where applicable.