Re-branding a company is a huge deal and contains many aspects. This post will deal more specifically with the issue of when a business decides to change it’s name. I will give a few examples of why even after you have changes your business name, and maybe even your website, that Google and other search engines still continue to show old information regarding your business.
Re-branding & SEO Example
I want to start out with a case that I just came across recently. It is not my client, it was someone who was asking a question on a forum that I then tried to help.
The issue was that the business in question was re-branded and changed both their company name and website. They redirected the old domain to the new one. Three months later, when doing a site search, Google was still showing the old company name but with the new url. They wanted to know why Google had not updated their information yet.
Old Company Information
There might be many reasons why Google had not updated their information yet, but three months is a long time to be waiting. I went about searching to see what I could find. The first thing I did was to type in their old name to see what came up.
As you can see below, what I found was that they had not even updated their Google Business Listing. It was verified so they had ownership of it, but they seem to have forgotten about it. The website listed pointed to their old domain name, which was then 301 redirected to the new one.
So, I suspect that the main reason why Google did not update the organic search information was because the company itself never bothered to tell Google that there was a new name. It had the old name in its listing, pointing to the new domain. And that’s what Google continued to show.
Updating Social Media Profiles
This company had other issues with its social media profiles as well. Their Twitter and Facebook profiles were not updated either. This effectively was telling Google’s algorithm that the name of the company was still Mono Machines since that’s what all the profiles still said.
Even though the urls associated with the social media profiles were redirected to the new site which had new titles and new meta descriptions, the data that Google was collecting across the web was telling it that the old name was still in effect. The algorithm was ignoring any new Titles that the new website had, because other stronger data was overriding it.
As you can see form the image of their old Twitter account, they have not updated their business name or URL to their website, but they have created a twitter account for their new business name. Creating a new Twitter account may not have been the best option to be able to keep their subscribers.
But what is confusing Google’s algorithm is that the old business name, associated with the old url, is being redirected to the new url.
NAP Discovery
What we call NAP in the SEO world stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. it is one of the first things that we do as SEO consultants when we are auditing a business. Correcting any old information on directory sites and all social media profiles to make sure that they are all accurate is of paramount importance.
As we can see in the example above, three months is a long time for a business to wait for its re-branding efforts to be updated in Google. The old information could have been detected and corrected immediately with a simple search if you know what to look for.
The point is, you can’t do a business re-branding halfway. There are so many aspects to look at when making changes to a company name, website url, or location. It really is important that every nook and cranny is looked at to make sure that you are not losing any customers to old and inaccurate data.
If you have any questions about this article or have previously done a business re-branding or relocation and would like me to have a look at your online profiles and information, feel free to contact me. I would be happy to help.
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