Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What To Do With Two Business Having The Same Name?
-
Hi friends,
We have a client who is in a peculiar predicament... essentially his business and his biggest competitor share the same name. Officially on their business licenses they are differentiated by the year they were each established, but in all their marketing, on their website, and in the community they are both known by the exact same name. When the company name is searched for, the competitor shows up #1 organically with the map pin as well as in the knowledge graph, and our site shows up number 2 without any any map pin or Google+ page site link or anything.
We thought we could differentiate ourselves by changing his Google+ page name to his official business name (with the date) and building a bunch of really good citations with that official business name, but we still haven't made a dent for his branded keyword, and our Google+ page site links aren't even showing up.
Has anyone run into a situation like this and any suggestions?
-
Hi Samuel,
I see ... thank you for explaining what you meant about the dates. You're right, no one is going to search for the business name/year. Good luck with the citation building!
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for the response!
So the only way the two business officially differentiate themselves is by the year they were established on their business licenses. For example, we're "ABC Company 1983 Ltd." and they are "ABC Company 1995 Ltd.". We tried changing the Google+ page to "ABC Company 1983 Ltd." and building citations with that name, but the problem is people only search for "ABC Company" and we're pretty behind compared to them in citations, anchor text links, etc. I guess the only thing we can do is keep our name without the date, and just out-build them. Thanks!
-
Hi Samuel!
That is an unusual situation (and kudos to Ryan for surfacing the Burger King story!). If, in your geography, Google is only showing one local result for a branded search (not a keyword search) then the client may be stuck. In some geographies, a branded search will show a pack of all nearby locations of that brand, but it sounds like in your client's scenario, Google is showing a local one-box or something like that. Unless the customer wants to re-brand, he is likely going to be stuck with this situation unless:
-
Google starts showing multiple results for the brand
-
He manages to completely surpass the competitor so that he becomes the #1 result
Right now, Google is likely thinking that both businesses are the same entity. I'm not quite sure what you mean about adding a date to the business name - please feel free to clarify that. If the client can't re-brand then the second option is really the only active thing he can pursue. You might like to check out the How To tab of this tutorial for using our Check Listing tool to identify weaker competitors:
-
-
It's definitely an odd situation! Any sort of differentiation you could use would help though: logo, tagline, business format (LLC, Inc, Canadian equivalent)... Personally a year wouldn't mean much to me if I was on the consumer side trying to figure out which one was which.
-
I'm not that Burger King... but maybe if I can get this figured out I'll reach out to them
So when our agency came aboard, we were definitely behind as far social media profiles, popular local citations, etc when compared to the competitor. And the majority of the profiles for the competitor have the name in its simplest (and most searched for) form. When we started we wanted to differentiate ourselves so we added the year established to all our citations, but I think we might just have to use the more common business name even if it conflicts with the competitor. Since we're not showing up in maps anyway, it's not like our local listing can get any worse...
-
You're not running Burger King in Matoon are ya? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger_King_(Mattoon,_Illinois) -- a pretty good read about how the US has two Burger Kings...
That's definitely a tricky spot. Has the competitor already registered social media accounts in the company name as well? Is their domain a better match for the brand than your client's? Is the competitor active on social media matching the company name? Are both companies thoroughly listed on the sites you'd find in Moz Local (Yelp, YP, Foursquare, Google and Bing Local Business, etc.)? To get the map pin you'll really want to focus on the Name, Address, and Phone lining up on each service and ensure that Google has the verified business address as well. If there are big gaps in any of those things between your client and the competitor catching up should help move the needle.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Seasonal Setting Options for Google My Business
Hi there, Not sure if anyone will have any insight but I have a seasonal business that I am closed for from September to March. I don't want to mark my business as "permanently closed" through Google My Business as I don't want my customers to think I've gone out of business. I've seen a few times through forums that you can change your business to temporarily closed, but I can't find the specifics on how to do this. Any insight, suggestion or resources would be great! Thanks!
Local Listings | | MainstreamMktg1 -
Business Name Not Showing Up in Google's Maps
I have a client whose name in not currently showing up on Google maps. Their business location only shows once their name or related keywords are searched, but their business name does not show when you only look for it on the map regardless of how far zoomed in you are to the actual location. I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this, or knows of a way to fix this. I have already contacted Google multiple times, and they told me that “business’ names are just randomly pulled”. The client is an HVAC store front business with good rankings and a fully optimized Google profile, so these reasons did not answer the issue. Client’s GMB profile: https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=rothheating oak creeek&oq=rothheating oak creeek&rlz=1C1JPGB_enUS685US685&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.5919j0j4 DBZfF
Local Listings | | JohnWeb120 -
Disadvantages to Hiding Business Address on Google Places?
From a Local SEO standpoint, wouldn't hiding a business address on Google Places for Business create an SEO disadvantage in that I would expect in the local portion of the search results, there would be a bias to showing businesses that have not hidden their address as then you can place a pin on the map at the location? Or from a Local SEO standpoint does it not matter if you hide your address or not?
Local Listings | | Jazee1 -
For Google's Structured Data, should I change my listings from Product schema to Local Business schema?
I was reading Google's Structured Data spec, and I'm considering changing the schema of our listing pages from the Product schema to the Local Business schema. Is this a good idea? To give you a little more info, the pages that I'm classifying are listings for physical spaces that our website rents out for activities, such as meetings. Here's an example of a listing: https://www.peerspace.com/pages/listings/550ddcde2f352d0800fc186b Our goal is to add the proper schema.org tags to the page so that our spaces show up in local searches, such as "meeting space in San Francisco." The problem is that when we add location microdata (addressLocality, addressRegion, etc.) to our current "Product" schema, Google tells us that "Products" can't have a location. However, we aren't quite a "Local Business" either, since we don't publicly share our space's street addresses—only the space's neighborhood/city/state for privacy reasons. As a result, we get an error from Google's Structured Data Tool as a "Local Business" page because "streetAddress" is required for Local Businesses. Should we switch to the Local Business schema anyway, even though we get structured data errors for streetAddress? Or is it better not to include the location information in the microdata so that we don't have errors? Does Google penalize you for incomplete tags? Any input is appreciated!
Local Listings | | stuartstein0 -
Using Hashtag for Google My Business
I was told by a Google My Business representative to include #{keywords} in my description. I was told this would boost my rankings. Has anyone else heard of this?
Local Listings | | Smart_Start0 -
2 Businesses + Same Address = Not a Problem?
Imagine someone who has 2 separate businesses with the same (home) address. Both are verified Google My Business G+ pages, each with its own separate website. Essentially the old business that is being de-emphasized is a guitar lesson teacher's studio. This G+ page is set as a storefront where people come to. The new business is similar, it is music lessons (private in-home instruction). This G+ page is set to have a service area - this goes along with their new business model. We all know that consistent NAP is essential BUT do you think these are competing against each other because they share an address even though the businesses are separate?
Local Listings | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Two businesses - using separate suite numbers
I have a client that has an office in a particular suite (Suite 101) at a local address. They rent the space so they cannot just add another suite number. They are going to have two websites for two different businesses run from the same location. They will have separate local phone numbers for each business. Is it too much of a stretch for them to show one as "Suite 101-A" and the other as "Suite 101-B" for their local pages? One of the businesses is very new with few citations at this point. The other has not started up yet, so we have better control of the citations that will be created. I've seen similar questions posted, but not one that addresses this specific issue. Thanks for any advice!
Local Listings | | wcksmith10 -
Bing Places for Business - Worth It?
Hey Fellow Mozzers, I am trying to determine if Bing Places for Business is worth the time and effort it takes to create listings. My business has 900 locations, and would take some time to create the bulk upload file to load into the Bing Places for Business dashboard. My question is, since Bing already does a good job of creating business listings using data from 3rd party sources such as Yelp and Citysearch, where I already have a strong presence for each of my locations, is there any value in overriding the automatically created business page for each of my location with information that I upload?
Local Listings | | dsinger2