Are Ampersands Bad for Seo?

The use of an ampersand is something I would recommend using in the meta title tag and content headlines. With regards to the meta title tag, using an ampersand can be helpful from an SEO aspect because it is shorter than the full word and can be used to create a higher response title.

Is changing titles bad for SEO?

The simple answer to this question is yes, changing title tags can cause a rankings drop. While, no, Google does not see this as a way to game the system as their needs to be a consistency between what the title tag terms and what terms are in the content on the page itself.

Does Google read ampersands?

So there's the answer - yes Google can understand plus signs and ampersands, and yes they do treat each query slightly differently.