The site is indexed with the new description. I failed to remember to check whether the article is indexed though, which is not the case. Does that mean that is almost impossible that the ranking decrease came from these links, since the article is not indexed?
Change it away from exact match and do a branded keyword.
Trust me it will jump up.
The problem is you are playing local SEO like your normal large scale SEO game and the SERPS are not the same.