Welcome back this is John Locke, and today I'm answering a question about changing your business
name in Google My Business. Now, I saw this question in a marketing forum, and the person
asking said, "We recently changed our business name, and before, we were ranking really well
in Google Maps. But after we changed the name, we ended up not ranking all that well. We're nowhere
to be found. So, did we tank our SEO?" There's a few things that you need to consider when changing
your business name and Google My Business. Number one, if you had keywords in your name before,
and you took the keywords out, that can definitely affect your ranking in Google
Maps. If keywords were in your name, the business name, and you took those keywords out of there,
that can definitely have an adverse effect. Now, you shouldn't drop all the way out of the
top five pages in Google Maps but should still be there somewhere. But yeah, it can have an effect.
The second thing to consider is, that sometimes Google will see that [changed name business] as
an entirely new business. Maybe they see it as a brand-new business, and the reason why
I say this is, sometimes--let's say you're doing edits on Google Maps,
and you see somebody spamming the Google Maps, and they have all these different keywords stuffed in
their business name. And you know that's not your business name. You can suggest an edit,
and it [Google Maps] will ask you, “Are you making a change to the name of the business? Or are you
saying that this business is permanently closed?” So that's why I say, sometimes, if you change
your business name and it's radically different from what it was [previously] -- it's something
completely different from what your business name was before-- it's not even close to the
same--Google might say, “This is a brand new business!” Or the algorithm might think that
a little bit. Something to consider. The third thing that I think you need to really realize is,
when you're changing your business name, you need to change it everywhere--not just on
Google My Business--but you need to change it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube,
Better Business Bureau, YP com, Yelp, if you're on HomeAdvisor or Angie's List, change it there.
Anywhere that you have a profile, wherever you are, change that business name, because Google is
going to look at that information from all these different places, and say, "Can we trust this
info?" and they're going to try and match it up to that Google My Business name. And if your Google
My Business name is one thing, and then you still have another business name that's everywhere else,
Google's going to the weigh the algorithm and match it up—and it's going to say, “These are
probably two different businesses, because the information doesn't match up.” Especially if
you've changed it to something radically different than what your name was before. So, make sure you
change it everywhere, because otherwise, that that can affect that too, and Google will not
trust the quality of what we call citations---NAPW citation--it's N.A.P.—name, address, phone number,
sometimes people who call NAPW—name, address, phone number, and website--all those pieces of
information about your business need to be the same everywhere. Then Google will trust
that quality of information. All right, so I hope that gives you something to think about,
and some things to do. I hope that your situation works itself out, and that you regain your
position in Google Maps. But those are some things that you should definitely check into. My name is
John Locke, my business is Lockedown SEO, and I'm here every single day making videos on SEO. If you
have a question leave it in comments below, I'll be happy to answer. And until next time, peace.