Google Business Profile: How Much Do Keywords in the Business Name Impact Ranking?
This article is part 5 of 9 from my LocalU presentation from March 2020. If you missed the event, the videos are available for purchase here.
Business Name & SEO Ranking in Google Maps
For as long as there have been local packs on Google, keywords in the business name have had a major impact on ranking. To help illustrate how much adding keywords to your business name in your Google Business Profile (formerly “Google My Business”) impacts ranking, I’ll share a test we did last year. We experimented with a listing for a restaurant that did not have a salad bar. They didn’t even have a website and there was literally no mention of their brand anywhere else online.
Test: Does Adding a Keyword to a Business Name Improve Ranking on Google Maps?
What We Did
- Added the words “Salad Bar” to their Google Maps business name inside the Google My Business dashboard.
- A few days later, we deleted the words.
- We then waited a week and added them back.
Result of a Keyword-Stuffed Business Name
This was the ranking result for the search term “salad bar [city] [state]”.
The results speak for themselves. As you can see, adding a keyword to the Google Business name dramatically improved ranking. Removing the keyword decreased rankings back to where they originally were. Adding the keyword back increased rankings dramatically again.
We’ve done other testing and concluded that if you have multiple keywords in your business name, having them next to each other (side-by-side) increases ranking. We’ve also found that adding keywords to the business name often results in increased ranking in the local results within hours of adding the keywords.
Should You Add Keywords to Your Google Business Profile Name?
Adding descriptors to your business name in Google My Business is against the guidelines and can lead to the listing getting suspended. Google’s guidelines state: “Including unnecessary information in your business name is not permitted, and could result in your listing being suspended“.
Should I Report Competitors Who Are Breaking These Guidelines?
If you have a business that is outranking you and they are adding keywords to their business name, it can be extremely difficult to compete with them due to the amount of weight Google puts on this in their local algorithm that fuels the 3-pack.
The fact is keywords in your Google Business Profile name matter… a lot.
Here are 3 examples of what happened when we got Google to remove keywords from a business that was breaking the guidelines by including them in the business name:
- For a drug rehab business, they ranked in position 1 for the term they were adding to their business name. Once Google removed the keywords, they dropped to position 7 two days later.
- For a different drug rehab business, they were in position 4 for the term they had in their business name. Once Google fixed the business name, they dropped to position 5 three days later.
- In another case, for a lawyer, removing the keywords had this impact:
Our article about spam on Google Maps goes into detail about how you can report competitors that are doing this to gain ranking in the 3-pack. It often does take multiple reports to get Google to act on it.
So does that mean, if you are lucky enough to have a keyword in the actual name you will rank higher than a company whose trading name does not include the key word ?
Pretty much :/
It also means that there will people who will report your listing without validating that the term is actually in your legal business name in order to gain a ranking advantage.
I have a business that has been on the map pack forever. I have a keyword in the company name but was wondering if I should enhance it by adding more keywords to the name.
For example: If the company name is “Bread Makers” should I update the name to “Bread Makers Bakery”?
I noticed a large franchise company that is located in a city 20 miles away now dominating the map pack since they added a city after their brand name (They service that city but are NOT located in that city.)
Would me adding another keyword to the business name help me or hurt me?
Thanks 🙂
Hey Brett,
In most cases it would likely help but only for the one term you add. Depending on the volume of the term & the amount of business it drives, it could be a good idea to rebrand.
I’ve definitely seen positive results from having keywords in my business name (Conference Photography Australia, in case you’re interested!). A happy accident!
Interesting point. I am working on a project relates to Drug Rehab now. I should give a try on it.
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing. Learning about SEO and how much is driven by Google practices has definitely been vague although very interesting.
Joy,
Do you or any other industry insider have any idea if this is something Google is planning on addressing in the near future?
I’m not holding my breath. This has been a problem for the entire duration of my career (since 2006). They did attempt to address it last year. With the Vincity update in Nov 2021, keywords in the business name took a huge hit as a ranking factor. However, this was reversed in March 2022 so I assume there were too many false positives where it messed up branded searches on Google.
Unsurprisingly, the issue is that Google has to pick between leaving this stand vs. hosing a number of legitimate business name. Vertical+geographical area is a perfectly sensible business name to have, after all, and long predates Local SEO.
Hi Joy,
Thank you for the details on this. We are contemplating re-branding our local business and was wondering if your findings still hold true 3+ years after your article originally came out. Do you have any sentiments that google may change how they weigh these keywords in the future?
Thank you,
Doug D
Yes, it’s definitely still true. I don’t have a crystal ball but it has been this big of a factor since I started in the industry back when Google Places first came out.
It’s definitely a tough one to tackle as mentioned above. If they cull it altogether then that will affect legitimate businesses in the long run, a manual review intervention to remove the spammy websites would be too costly to implement for Google.
It’s an interesting space to monitor, GMB has changed quite a bit overall recently, it’s all now managed on the SERP itself, and those GMB’s business “sites” appear to be no more. Great article by the way. Keep up the good work.