New name, everything else the same, will there be an impact on rankings?

[henbawkins]

Hi guys,

I have a client that's essentially changing their name from Tom & Jerry's to Ben & Jerry's.

They have great reviews and great rankings locally for their niche. Everything's going well. Obviously, I'll have to manually update the majority of the citations we've built.

I'm curious if in you're experience you've seen an effect on rankings with a name change in a similar situation?

Thanks in advance!

 

[mborgelt]

You will almost always see a slight drop with a change of major information but as long as you stay on top of citations you shouldn't see too big or long of a drop.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I've done a name change for clients twice and haven't seen a drop myself.

The 1st time we changed them all within a week.

The 2nd time we changed them within a month.

Both times we were fine. I would definitely suggest the week though to minimize any possibilities.

 

[Durandl]

inconsistency is what makes search engines confused. The speed at which you update your citations will play a huge part. And make sure you cover all citations, then you should be OK