When i search for my domain name - google asks "did you mean" - why?
-
Hi all,
I just noticed something quite odd - if i do a search for my domain name (see: http://goo.gl/LBc1lz) google shows my domain as first result, but it also asks "did i mean" and names another website with very similar name.
the other site has far lower PA/DA according to Moz, any ideas why google is doing this? and more inportantly how i could stop it?
please advise
James
-
Hi, thanks for the answers so far...
Although i understand what you are saying - and why google would want to use the "did you mean" feature.
I disagree that, in this case, its simply google tryin to help searchers - Why? if it was just because our domains are so close - litterally just 1 letter different, then in theory if i did the same search but for the other website - it would say "did you mean: my website"?
http://goo.gl/yphgxE but it doesnt...
This to me, means there is some kind of problem - devaluation of my website - so much so, google thinks if you search my domain name, you have searched it by mistake?
Can anyone shed some more light on this? any advice welcome
-
Whatever I am about to discuss is purely hypothetical and if anyone have a better understanding of it I would love to hear this answer from them but this is what I believe how this should work.
The whole idea of “did you mean” feature is to provide better search experience to user and give them the right options when they mistakenly write the wrong word. When it comes to spellings it should be easy to guess that they are getting the right spellings from dictionary but when it comes to the correct spelling of the brand they in my opinion are guessing the user behavior.
I search my own brand on Google with a wrong ccTLD “setalks.co.uk” and it says “did you mean: setalks.com” (the correct version of my domain) and I don’t see any other reason but because I have different quality and relevant website linking back to me with my domain name, brand name and mentions.
Again, I am not sure but if you get link or even mention from authority and relevant sources to your website with the anchor text of your URL or brand name probably Google will learn better about your domain name.
I know the PA and DA of your domain is better but still getting more quality links will only help. Also, social media can also help so try and share your products on social media as well and see if this solves your problem.
Hope this helps!
-
Googles main objective is making search easy and providing the best search results. That being said, Google is offering the other search example because it is so close to your domain name that they think it's possible it could be a mistake when searched. Google is trying to give the user the option to click just once and get to the correct website. Google would rather the user not have to click the wrong website and have to click back if they can prevent it.
So it's just Googles way of providing a better search experience. Sorry that answer does not help your situation. It happens to many website owners who have similar website domain names as other websites.
Hope this helps you understand why this is happening,
Joe
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
-
Any idea why Google Search Console stopped showing "Internal Links" and "Links to your site"
Our default eCommerce property (https://www.pure-elegance.com) used to show several dozen External Links and several thousand Internal Links on Google Search Console. As of this Friday both those links are showing "No Data Available". I checked other related properties (https://pure-elegance.com, http:pure-elegance.com and http://www.pure-elegance.com) and all of them are showing the same. Our other statistics (like Search Analytics etc.) remain unchanged. Any idea what might have caused this and how to resolve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SudipG0 -
Google News - How to be featured in different countries with same domain
Hello, I am sure I am not the first to go through this but I did not find the answers in the previous Q&As. So, sorry if this question is bit redundant for some folks. We have a site in English with readers in multiple english speaking countries. How to make www.mysite.com accepted in Google news for US, UK, India, Australia and Canada at the same time? It is currently accepted in the US but, as I stated above, we do have a strong audience in other countries. I have read about sub-domains, but wouldn't it be considered duplicated content if I had the exact same article in different sub-domains? We are talking about creating 4 copies on mysite.com just to be added to Google News in those specific countries www.mysite.com/same-article/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Koki.Mourao
uk.mysite.com/same-article/
au.mysite.com/same-article/
in.mysite.com/same-article/
ca.mysite.com/same-article/ Isn't there a better way of having mysite.com included in Google News for all English speaking countries?0 -
Whch Google Advanced Search Query To Use?
Hi basically i want to find sites which mention a specific exact keyword on the page e.g. "BMW" but the same keyword "BMW" is not contained in the title tag of the page. Is there a advanced search query to do this? I did try “BMW” Intitle:"-bmw" no luck. I do also have scrapebox if there is a way to do this through that. Cheers, Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mikey0080 -
Change of URLs: "little by little" VS "all at once"
Hi guys, We're planning to change our URLs structure for our product pages (to make them more SEO friendly) and it's obviously something very sensitive regarding the 301 redirections that we have to take with... I'm having a doubt about Mister Google: if we slowly do that modification (area by area, to minimize the risk of problems in case of bad 301 redirection), would we lose rankings in the search engine? (I'm wondering if they might consider our website is not "coherent" -> not the same product page URLs structure for all the product pages during some time) Thanks for your kind opinion 😉
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kuantokusta0 -
How to remove wrong crawled domain from Google index
Hello, I'm running a Wordpress multisite. When I create a new site for a client, we do the preparation using the multisite domain address (ex: cameleor.cobea.be). To keep the site protected we use the "multisite privacy" plugin which allows us to restrict the site to admin only. When site is ready we a domain mapping plugin to redirect the client domain to the multisite (ex: cameleor.com). Unfortunately, recently we switched our domain mappin plugin by another one and 2 sites got crawled by Google on their multsite address as well. So now when you type "cameleor" in Google you get the 2 domains in SERPS (see here http://screencast.com/t/0wzdrYSR). It's been 2 weeks or so that we fixed the plugin issue and now cameleor.cobea.be is redirected to the correct address cameleor.com. My question: how can I get rid of those wrong urls ? I can't remove it in Google Webmaster Tools as they belong to another domain (cf. cameleor.cobea.be for which I can't get authenticated) and I wonder if will ever get removed from index as they still redirect to something (no error to the eyes of Google)..? Does anybody has an idea or a solution for me please ? Thank you very much for your help Regards Jean-Louis
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JeanlouisSEO0 -
How often is a Places search run - ie via the Google menu option
Hi guys Does anyone have a gut feel for how often the Places search option is used via the left hand side menu of Google? I have a non-slip solutions (flooring/decking etc) client. Google does not provide a 'local search' type results page even when the location is added to the search term. So I am thinking I should prioritise energies on the website and not local search activities (like citations). But I am wondering how many searches are conducted using the Places option. Any views? Many thanks Wendy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0 -
Rel="prev" and view all question
Okay, I've read the posts by Google about the new prev, next tags and the suggestion for using a view all option. I've also read the posts here on SEOMoz on the topic but none of them quite address what we have. First, Some of our main categories are very large (over 6000 pieces of jewelry) so a view all option would take forever to load be completely useless to a visitor. Second, our category home pages provide (here's an example😞 A description of the category with links to important sections and articles A row of new items A dozen of the popular items from the category. Links to related articles if applicable. So we have a real category home page with content instead of just categories that start immediately with pages of product. Should we set the canonical url for all of the browse pages to the main category page, create a view all page or just use the next and previous rel tags with the category home pages as the first in the series?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot0 -
Keyword Rich Domain Redirects to Brand Name But How Will SEO Work For It?
If i have a keyword rich domain name, but i redirect it to a brand domain name, will doing seo for the keyword rich domain name be effective in showing up on google under that domain, for the keyword i do SEO for? or does this cause a conflict for spiders/robots as soon as they realize the page they want to check out is getting redirected to another domain name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lafurniturestore2