Using Abbreviated Name on GMB

[dnp]

Hey everyone,

I have a question about updating a client's Google My Business (GMB) name and would really appreciate your insights.

Our client recently decided to abbreviate their business name from something like 'Expert Plumbing Services in Southern California' to 'Plumbing in Socal' to make it more memorable for their customers (This is just an example and not the actual business name.)

However, their official business documents still use the original, longer name, and they don't plan on changing that for now. They've already incorporated both names (the long one and the abbreviation) into their new logo and will soon put up signage with the new name (abbreviation).

Our main concern is whether it's okay to update their GMB name to the abbreviated version, even though it won't match the name on their business documents. We were also thinking about using a combination of both names, like 'Plumbing in Socal: Expert Plumbing Services in Southern California'.

What would be the best approach here?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Great question! If you change the name, what might happen is you lose some ranking visibility for keywords related to the old name that have "expert", "plumbing", "Southern California" in them.

If you go with the combined name, make sure that is how they reflect it in the real-world as well.

 

[dnp]

Hi Colan, thanks for your reply! When you mentioned "reflect in the real world" for the combined name, does that mean the combined name should be used consistently across all their marketing materials, e.g., signage, website, etc.?

I think we're leaning towards going with the combined name for now. But I was wondering if there could be any potential roadblocks down the line if their official paperwork doesn't quite line up with the new business name.

I might be totally overthinking this, but I truly just want to gather as much information as possible, especially since Google can sometimes be a bit particular about these things. Thank you again, and I really appreciate your insight on this!