What's in a name? Well, Google's just made your Site Name a little more important. Your Daily Dose of Digital - 18/10/22

This might seem like a minor update in the grand scheme of Google things (and it probably is), but it could actually have an impact on your Organic CTR - so let's take a look at this week's announcement by Google about Site Names.

On the 15th October, Google announced that it is going to be replacing Title Tags with 'Site Name' in mobile search results, diminishing your control over how your site appears in search. So, what’s being shown in mobile searches is now just the generic name for a website.

This primarily effects results that are for the entire website, as opposed to focussed deep pages with very specific titles matching the search query and intent.

Google explained why they've done this:

“Today, Search is introducing site names on mobile search results to make it easier to identify the website that’s associated with each result…”

In the same way Google's move to re-write your site's meta titles and descriptions (on occasion), the Site Name it decides to show in these situations is automated and dictated by a number of sources from a site's homepage, including:

• WebSite structured data
• Content in <title> elements
• Heading elements, such as <h1> elements
• og:site_name

Google notes it can't manually change site names for individual sites, but that they are working to make them as accurate as possible.

However, you can have an impact on ensuring the site name is relevant/accurate and doesn't negatively impact your CTR (one of my concerns whenever Google starts manipulating SERP information), which is to use the WebSite Structured Data type to set the site name:

<title>Example: A Site about Examples</title>

<script type="application/ld+json">

{"@context" : "http://schema.org",

"@type" : "WebSite",

"name" : "Example",

"url" : "https://example.com/"}

</script>

Google's documentation explains some technical guidance on this:

• Currently, Google Search supports site names from homepages at the domain-level, and not at the subdomain (for example, https://news.example.com) and or subdirectory (for example, https://example.com/news) level.
• The WebSite structured data must be on the homepage of the site. By homepage, we mean the domain-level root URI. For example, https://example.com is the homepage of the domain, while https://example.com/de/index.html isn't the homepage.
• The homepage must be crawlable by Google (that is, it can't be blocked to Google). If we don't have access to the content on your homepage, we may not be able to generate a site name.
• If you have duplicate homepages for the same content (for example, HTTP and HTTPS versions of your homepage, or www and non-www), make sure that you're using the same structured data on all page duplicates, not just on the canonical page.

Google also recommends:

• Choose a unique name
• Use a concise, commonly-recognised name
• Use your site name consistently across your homepage.

One key consideration here is that Google is also taking into account the content in the title of the page, the headings (h1,h2...) and the OpenGraph protocol as mentioned above (and as is traditional for trying to dictate the title in search listings).

An example of this in action is if we search for "word fence" - the SERP listing is different on desktop compared to mobile, with the desktop utilising the site's meta title, and mobile using the new site name:

As this feature rolls out, we're obviously going to have to wait and see what impact this will have, if any, on performance.

The new site names feature in Google search declutters the SERPs (and arguably looks more attractive) on mobile devices for home brand name searches, but I think the jury will be out on whether this change is really positive for users and whether this removal of control causes any issues moving forwards.

Hopefully the tips above will enable you to control this change somewhat, but what do you think about Google's move to control how sites are displayed in SERPs? Let me know in the comments.

PS - Apologies for the lack of Daily Doses lately, my new role at Sagittarius has been high octane from the start and finding the time is proving a little challenging but I'll get back in the groove soon!