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.
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...
-
That's a tough one. If you want to DM me the url (or email it to me at marie at marie haynes dot com) I'd be happy to take a quick look.
-
Hi Marie. Thanks for your response.
I'm a bit hesitant to share the examples for my client's privacy. I hope you understand. I do not work on these websites' SEO, I was only asked to look into it to see if I can spot anything that could be causing this. I do, however, work for a larger website that owns both the websites, so that's why I've been asked.
The two businesses share the same address. I was thinking that this may be a factor, but neither site has a Google My Business listing or much in the way of offsite citations. No DMOZ listings.
There are no external canonicals in place, and no mention of the others' URL on the respective sites. Double checked
No duplicate content as both sites sell different products with no overlap, so no duplicate product listings or content. The two sites are not even competing in SERPs for any similar keywords.
-
This is an unusual question. Any chance you could share the example with us?
Do the two websites have much duplicate content between them? Google may be applying a canonical if they think it is duplicate content. Any chance that a canonical was inadvertently placed by you? (I know that's probably pretty unlikely.)
Any chance this has something to do with the businesses' DMOZ listing?
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
-
When Company names confuse search
I am currently perplexed over a client's search results. They are an established company and well known in their field. (Unfortunately, I am not comfortable providing a link or their name.) The company is a consulting firm and let's assume it is an accounting firm, which it is not. When you search on BSC Accounting the results give them the first result but the next 18 results are around education - BSc Accounting. Consider the DA on the site is 34 and the PA for homepage is 39. Is there a chance that when someone is searching on accounting firms that having the BSC in the name skews what they are able to rank for? Forget about searches for their exact name, I am more interested in thoughts as to how the BSC effects general searches for their specialties.
Branding | | RobertFisher1 -
Wrong logo on Google Knowledge Panel
We have several different listings & brands on our site and the logo that is being pulled is one of our listings. We have identified the logo through organization structured data as well as provided the "feedback" section with the correct link multiple times. Does anyone know how we can get this resolved?
Branding | | imjonny1230 -
Do review sites like consumer affairs negatively affect SERPs?
Hey all, So when googling the name of our site we see consumer affairs pop up around 5th with a 1 star rating. These negative reviews are mostly spammy (competitors, etc.) since we have an awesome support team that deals with all unhappy members very effectively. We reached out to CA and they came back asking for $10k+ (highway robbery) to "help us improve our rating." My question is: do poor ratings on review sites like these negatively affect your SERPs? And if so, how can we work to combat their effect? Thanks in advance, Roman
Branding | | Dynata_panel_marketing1 -
Copy/pasting the article from another website and referencing correctly not to get penalized
Hi all I am looking at copy/pasting an article from another website which is very relevant to my business, is there a standard practise/best practise for SEO to do this and ensure Google doesn't think i am plagerizing content etc.. Link to source down the bottom? Using Quotations... making a page noindex or no follow etc?
Branding | | IsaCleanse0 -
Avoid Keyword in New Domain Name?
We are looking to rebrand our domain name. Our existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. We own www.metro-manhattan.com and were hoping to use this domain. The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. Is the fact that the new domain contains "Manhattan" a negative? I know that the fact that it has a hyphen is weak. Manhattan is part of such keywords as "Manhattan office space". Regarding the company name, is the fact that it contains the target phrase "Manhattan office space" bad? Our company name may sound like exact match anchor text and I am not sure what to do about this if anything. I would really prefer to keep our name but it is necessary to change it to improve SEO we will do so. Would it be better to change to a new name like "Integrity Real Estate" which does not contain target phrases or keywords ("real estate" is not a major target phrase as it is to generic) ? Or how something like www.mmos.com for the domain and leave the company name alone? How would I go about finding a company that would assist is in creating an SEO friendly domain name and perhaps a new corporate name if necessary? Thanks, Alan
Branding | | Kingalan10 -
Should I remove spaces from my brand name?
I'm looking for some second opinions on this one. In talking with another SEO, he is of the opinion that if my company name is two words like Crazy Man, I should write some news release that have my brand combined as Crazyman because it is a variant of the brand name. He claims that Google does not look at my brand as Crazy Man, but as one word and in Google's mind Crazyman as one word is my brand. What do you all think?
Branding | | kadesmith1 -
Is having two websites that sell most of the same products a good idea?
Hi - Please read this in full before you answer. I currently own a website that sells kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities that match the kitchens. This website has been operational since Arpil 2009 and we have built good rankings over the past 3 years. The site is operated on the Volusion platform (my mistake from the beginning, but we're kind of stuck now). We are in the process of designing a new website on the Magento platform - everything will be 100% different from look, speed, the way our customers shop, content, product skus, etc. The original plan was to keep the same domain but implement 301 redirects for subpages (subpage urls would have to change) and shut down the Volusion site and transfer the domain name to the Magento site. Our current website does make money right now and we would hate to lose rankings (even if only temporarily) during the switch or have something go wrong. What I am now thinking is keeping our current website on Volusion where it is currently making money and having the new Magento site have a new name/domain. The sites would sell most of the same products (the Magento site would sell more types of vanities and accessories though). The two sites would have different email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. Is it a bad idea to try and rank two websites selling pretty much the same thing? We have competitors out there that sell the same products as us, I would just prefer to compete with myself rather then someone else. Another issue is our name, one of our competitors names is extremely close to ours and we rank for pretty much all of the same keywords and customers get us mixed up all the time. This other site would have a different name (one that makes more sense). I want to make a decision that will not come back and bite us later. I know there are a lot of bigger sites that operate tons of niche sites, and of these website could eventually be similar to that. I really appreciate your help and guidance! Thanks
Branding | | tyler7560 -
The Franchise Challenge: How should I handle 200 franchisee websites?
Hi all.. this is not a question about how this can be done but which is better for SEO. Franchises make up 8% of the USA small business market. This is no small potatoes. But everything about Google seems designed for the unique, stand-alone business (Places, Analytics, Adwords, Duplicate Content Rules, etc.) ... I think about this issue a lot so wanted to put it to the community. Imagine a franchisor with 200 locations. This company licenses its brand and business operations system - that's what a franchise is. So each local franchisee starts out with a "content ready" website template which they are required to use for brand compliance. (Each local franchisee has a Google Place page and a Local Website in their territory.)Assuming each solution has the same number of local citations around 50% duplicate content on its services pages (e.g. branding text)... which of the following does Google like best? A single, customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) which places each franchisee site in a subfolder of the TLD. Highly duplicated services pages are given canonical pointers to the main site's version.
Branding | | scottclark
domain.com/location A single, customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) which places each franchisee in a subdomain of the TLD. Highly duplicated services pages are given canonical pointers to the main site's version. location.domain.com A multi-manager dashboard (e.g. ManageWP) which operates an individual Wordpress installs on a single server (dedicated self-install server, sites share IPs)
_localdomain.com _ A multi-manager dashboard which operates an individual Wordpress install on multiple, diverse servers (e.g. shared hosting on diverse hosts.)
localdomain.com I know that the best case would be for each franchisee individually to be so motivated to set up their own site and properly use brand elements, get links, etc. but this is impractical (trust me.)~~~~~~(*update 4/4/13 - I have written a blog post which describes what I think is the ideal franchise web marketing & SEO program and would welcome additional comments!)0