Penalized for TITLE change? What to do next? Revert to old TITLE?

[KatowJo]

Hey there. I was building an amazing presence on SERPs. My index page was ranking very well with most keywords. I had my google+ profile pic on search results and on top of this, some internal links were also ranking below the homepage on the first page of results, giving me a double and sometimes triple listing on certain keywords. It was a SEO dream.
And then i had the brilliant idea to change the title of 3 pages, including the index. Ouch.
After googlebot's last visit, my profile pic is not showing anymore on search results that show my homepage, and the internal links are not ranking on the first page of results anymore. I did not lose my rankings to the home page. What i mean is that after this <TITLE> change, i lost the "bells and whistles", if you know what i mean.

Question is: What should i do? Wait for google to check that my title change was not due to a spam tactic and let them revert my situation?
Should i go back to the previous <TITLEs> or that would be even worse?

Thanks for your time.


KatowJo

[KernelPanic]

Change it back, see what happens?

[dzine]

Was the new title really that much better?

Also: did you REALLY only change the titles?

[realityhack]

KP and Dzine are correct.
You are operating under post hoc ergo propter hoc
Change the title back and see what happens. Most likely at least some of what happened is coincidence, or something else changed, could be inbound links, other page factors, random Google stuff, anything.
While it is *possible* that everything is due to your title change I find it unlikely given how little Google relies on the title.

[joshz]

You weren't penalized for anything. You loss rankings for changing tags. There's a HUGE difference and this thread title is way misleading.

[Chedders]

Could also be a new site and was in the honeymoon period, OP has not said how old the site is nor given us an example of what the titles where before and after. So any advice given is pure guess work.

[Test-ok]

I find many times after a title change a drop, then recoup a short time later. Almost like Google wanting to see if your planning on making more changes to gain higher serps, which it frowns on.
Think about it..if you changed the title and google moved you to the correct spot, it would cause everyone to change titles until they appeared where they wanted to be. That's not what google wants, make the title what the page is about, make it good and make it once.
However that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.