Spam in search engine results for company brand name
-
Hi,
I'm having a strange problem with a certain comapny.
When you Google their brand name the first 8 results or so are related - their site, Google+ page, Twitter etc. The rest of the results are completely unrelated to the site and much of it is in another language and looks really spammy.
According to the site owner until recently the first 50-60 results were related - mostly local results, press releases, and franchise companies listing his business. They don't have a great link profile but that shouldn't have them dropping out of the results, especially since they're still ranking in the top 1-8 positions.
Here's the strangest part: the company name is Libertana. All the spammy results are not so much spammy, they're related to the syllable "na". Examples:
- Ivanyukite-Na Mineral Data
- įt$koka!na's sounds on SoundCloud - Hear the world's sounds
- Bosiniya na Herizegovina - Wikipedia
What on earth is going on? Why would they rank for the last syllable of their name?
-
Perhaps a competitor or hacker are trying to displace them from the search results? One of the 'spam' results has "2,427 links to this URL from the past 32 days" according to Open Site Explorer - have you checked to see if any of that anchor text is the company name? I don't have full access to Moz at the moment so can't see.
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
-
Why not just use an alias if the only change is a different domain Name?
We are rebranding our store with a new name. We have purchased a NewDomainName. Can I just make the "Old Domain Name" an alias for the "NewDomainName"? The site will not change in any other way than having a new logo. This is an e-commerce site with over 100 categories of artisan made products. So once we move the site, the old domain will be empty. Thank you Stephen
Branding | | stephenfishman1 -
Why is Google appending a different website's brand name to the end of SERP title?
I've recently been shown some SERP results where Google is appending a different website's brand name to the end of the SERP title. It's actually rewriting the brand's name to that of the other website. (This is obviously not ideal.) Why would this be? The other website doesn't even stock the same product, so there shouldn't be any confusion there. But even if it did, many websites stock the same products. Just confusing...
Branding | | Ria_1 -
Mentions if domain slightly different to brand name
Hi, Just a question/discussion regarding mentions. I have read for the last few years that Google is able to give credit to websites who get mentioned without a link. Even a few months ago there was a big article on the Google update at the end of last year saying how mentions would become an even stronger signal than a link. My question is, if anyone knows, is there any evidence that Google and other search engines are able to give ranking credit to websites whose brand name is slightly different from the domain? Can the search engines figure out that it is the same thing? If not, then there must be a lot of brands missing out. Thanks.
Branding | | Brian_Dowd0 -
If I bid on my brand name, will it make the keyword more expensive for my competitors
Our brand name is being bid on by out competitors. If we bid on our own brand name, for which we rank #1 for all our profiles and website, will we make our competitors cost per click higher?
Branding | | Catherine_Selectaglaze0 -
Why does our Facebook not show up when searching for our business name?
Our Facebook is titled NJ & PA Personal Injury Attorney Richard P. Console Jr., and the url is Facebook.com/myinjuryattorney, and our website is www.consoleandhollawell.com. Because of the different names, we put social schema on our site which we thought would help Google associate the two. It doesn't seem to be working as we are not showing up in the serp's when searching for "Console & Hollawell Facebook" and even "Richard Console Facebook" Could anyone give any insight as to why? Thank you!
Branding | | marketingdepartment.ch0 -
Enhancing SEO Between WordPress Blog and Company Website
My company has recently launched a new and improved website within the last couple months. Unfortunately, the web developers that we'd hired to build and create the site work very little with SEO, thus leaving me in the dark on where to direct any questions regarding the optimization of our web content. Along with the new website design, we've also rolled out a WordPress blog related to our firm. We do have the blog embedded onto a page of our website, and clicking on any title will redirect the viewer to our WordPress blog, hosted separately from our website. My question is this--how do you suggest I drive viewers from our blog to our website, rather than vice versa? Are there any applications, widgets, etc that you could recommend that would help me better associate the blog with our company? Any advice would help. Thanks!
Branding | | LMcLaughlin0 -
Do Dashes in Domain names hurt SEO ranking?
I have found conflicting reports online whether or not dashes in domain names hurt/help ranking. Example yourbrandonline.com vs your-brand-online.com? I found Rand's write up on how to select a domain and he suggests staying away from hyphens but mainly because its hard to remember or people my enter it in wrong. Here's his comment. "Reject Hyphens and Numbers
Branding | | JoshKimber
Both hyphens and numbers make it hard to give your domain name verbally and falls down on being easy to remember or type. I'd suggest not using spelled-out or roman numerals in domains, as both can be confusing and mistaken for the other." Aside from people possibly struggling to get there directly because of the domain name, are they OK to use? Or, are domains with hyphens considered spammy? Thanks in advance.1 -
Should your company's name be in the title tag of your website?
First of all, I would like to provide some background information. Our company is small. We are just now getting into SEO research and have been improving over a couple months of research. We are somewhere in the 500,000's in the world rankings. From what I understand, the title tag provides a great amount of weight to whatever keywords you set up. The words in the title tag are supposed to represent keywords that you want to be high in the search engines for, correct? Well, in our title tag, we have the name of our company. To me, this is a waste of space. No one is going to go to Google and search for our company's name because we are not that widely known. Looking back at our search history for customers, there has not been a single search for the company name. What someone is telling me, is that when we put our link somewhere, having the name of our company in the title tag strengthens the "link juice" we get from those links. Is this correct, or is it worth trashing the company name for another keyword to optimize?
Branding | | FrontlineMobility0