Interesting behavior after a name change

[HoosierBuff]

Hi All,

This happened today, and it was kind of interesting.

I can't quite reveal the name, so I hope this doesn't get lost in the anonymization.

I had a client that for a long time was simply "TX-Lab - Bio Testing".

For some reasons that he explained, and I never fully understood why, but, he changed the name to "Fred's TX-Lab- Bio testing". This name change happened 10 months ago.

The tricky part is, a search for just "TX-Lab" he wouldn't show up, not in the top 3 in the maps. . . . and not all the results that showed up even had lab in the name (to be fair, he was #4 in maps for the TX-Lab search). He wasn't showing up for branded search that didn't include Fred.

Lo and behold, this morning, he removed "Fred's" from his GMB name, and now he shows up for the search.

Two things are possible:
1. Somehow he became more relevant by dropping the name due to the first words in the name matching closer, or having fewer words in the name, or the important words being first. . . somehow, he improved due to some sort of relevance improvement as result of the name change.

2. The GMB ranking improved because the name (without Fred), matches other sources of information and that whole name consistency thing.

Kind of interesting to see the change. I'm certain he is going to see more traffic as a result. I'm not 100% sure why this happened.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Somehow he became more relevant by dropping the name due to the first words in the name matching closer, or having fewer words in the name, or the important words being first. .

It's hard to say for sure, but I would put my money on this as the reason.

 

[JoyHawkins]

My vote would be for reason #1