DBA or Business Name

[Laustin1878]

I recently encountered a situation where the company obtained a DBA. The actual business name includes the city where their business is located at the end of the name while the DBA does not include the city in the business name. The company prefers to go by the DBA as they feel it limits their reach by using their real business name (which includes a city at the end).

IMO, although the city is not a major city, I say keep the Google Places page as is, which is their primary business name. What do you think?

Along with this, their domain changed. I immediately updated the Places account under the dashboard to reflect the new URL but it is still showing up in the results as the old URL. What gives? This was over a month ago and the search index already has 98% of the new URL's for the site indexed properly. Any legit way to nudge this along other than searching for it and clicking it in the results?

 

[Linda Buquet]

I recently encountered a situation where the company obtained a DBA. The actual business name includes the city where their business is located at the end of the name while the DBA does not include the city in the business name. The company prefers to go by the DBA as they feel it limits their reach by using their real business name (which includes a city at the end).

IMO, although the city is not a major city, I say keep the Google Places page as is, which is their primary business name. What do you think?

Tough call. Is DBA same word for word, just no city?
What does the citation research I taught you look like (How many for each?)
How recent was DBA compared to how old is the orig name?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Along with this, their domain changed. I immediately updated the Places account under the dashboard to reflect the new URL but it is still showing up in the results as the old URL. What gives? This was over a month ago and the search index already has 98% of the new URL's for the site indexed properly. Any legit way to nudge this along other than searching for it and clicking it in the results?

Are you saying it's correct in dash and on live listing but not in the SERPs?

I'd use Chrome and find other links to site and click them.

Then if there is Schema on the site try running it through Google's rich snippet tester.

No guarantees, just a couple things worth trying to get her to pick up changes.

 

[Laustin1878]

The DBA is within the last 2 months or at least I was only told about a month ago about it. So several years compared to 2 months, at least that I've been made aware. The original business name is Company Name in Town and the DBA is just the Company Name. There was talk about opening a second location and they wanted to be situated ahead of time in the event this took place. So yes, the only change from company name to DBA is the city being dropped. I haven't actually checked the # of citations for the DBA.

All they've been known for around the web is Company Name in Town so all of their citations reflect that. I've been going around and requesting the URL's for the links to be changed to the new domain which is companyname.com. The original URL was companynametown.com. 301's are in place for this. They redesigned their website and I thought it was best to redesign and change the domain at the same time to prevent 2 occurrences of ranking interruptions. Rather just have one ranking interruption.

In the Places Dashboard, the new domain is visible. On the live version of the listing, it is still the old domain. I kept the company name the same in the dash as I didn't want it to re-do hundreds of citations. Unless otherwise, by the end of this discussion, the consensus is to use the DBA over the main company name.

Im guessing that the # of citations using the old domain are outweighing what I've changed in the claimed places listing?

 

[Linda Buquet]

OK so one thing, if anything is correct in dash (like the URL) but Google is displaying something different, the quick fix is phone support. The next option is edit details right on the listing. Explain it well in notes. Wait for someone in maps to fix it.

Re the name, I get why they want to drop city now. And if you changed it on the listing it probably would not affect citations. Abes Plumbing in Altanta still includes the name Abes Plumbing so things should still match up pretty well. If you have old dash and use my trick from training to just carefully delete city from name, you may not even need to re-verify. Not sure if that trick still works in new dash or not. But anyway deleting one word is less of a name change than adding a word would be. Adding a word could be seen as KW stuffing and trip a filter but removing a word would be less likely to I would think.

 

[Laustin1878]

Thank you Linda. I will go to the map and fix it and see if that yields any success followed by phone support. As I said, 301 redirects are in place so it's not too big of a deal. I just didn't understand why I pushed an update in the Places Dash (still the old one) and it didn't show up in the SERPs.

My biggest fear was the citations needing adjustment. I find citations painful enough sometimes and I didn't want to muddy the waters and lose local rank. The local ranking has held on nicely through all the website changes.