28 jul 2023

Questions about site names

This thread is to answer some common questions about site names. If you are having site name issues, you can also share feedback in this thread.

PLEASE NOTE: This thread is not intended to produce a specific change to a specific issue with a site name. Instead, we’ll consider this feedback for possible improvements to how site names are generated generally.

Site names timeline

October 2022: Site names for the domain level were introduced for mobile search results for English, French, German and Japanese.
April 2023: Site names were added for desktop for the same set of languages. Later in this month, we also released an update to how our system selected site names.
May 2023: Site names support was added on the subdomain level for the same set of languages and on mobile search results only.
July 2023: Site names support was added on the subdomain level for the same set of languages for desktop search results. We also released a further improvement in how our system selects site names and updated our documentation. See our blog post for more.

Resources & Support

Provide a site name to Google Search is our guidance about how to help us understand what site name to show for your site. We encourage you to review that guidance to resolve any issues, especially the troubleshooting section.

If you have followed that guidance and still aren’t seeing your preferred site name, feel free to share your situation below. In particular, provide your site’s home page URL, the site name you expected to see and the site name you actually see.

Please note: We do not use reports in this thread to make specific changes for particular sites. Instead, we use the reports to understand how to make general improvements to our system that generates site names.

FAQ

Below are some questions we’ve had. We may add to these over time.

Q: Why is my URL is showing instead of a site name?

A: If your URL is showing rather than a site name, this doesn’t represent an error but instead that our systems aren’t confident enough to show a site name for your site. This can be for a variety of reasons and might change over time. Consult our guidance and ensure you’re making use of your preferred site name in the areas that help us determine this.

Q: Why is my site that’s in a subdirectory is not showing my preferred site name?

A: Site names are not supported for subdirectories (for example, https://example.com/news is a subdirectory-level home page and cannot have its own site name). See our technical guidance for more.

Q: Why is my site name on my home page not appearing on or is different from what shows for my internal pages?

A: This is a known issue in some cases that we’re working to address. Please see our documentation for more.

Detalles

Crawling, Indexing and Ranking

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Respuesta recomendada

Danny Sullivan, Public Liaison for Search

Empleado de Google

28 jul 2023

Our documentation explains that if you're seeing your domain or subdomain show, our system isn't confident enough to assign a site name:

However, if our system is less confident in a name you provided, it may sometimes generate site names using other sources or show a domain or subdomain name.

It seems likely the system sees the name you've selected as too generic, as also explained on the page:

Avoid using a generic name. A generic name like "Best Dentists In Iowa" is unlikely to be selected by our system as a site name, unless that's an extremely well-recognized brand name.

Given this, you should look to follow the advice in the troubleshooting section, in particular about providing alternative names to be considered.

Community Manager Matheus. ha recomendado esto

¿Ha sido útil?

Todas las respuestas (171)

Danny Sullivan, Public Liaison for Search

Empleado de Google

Respuesta recomendada

28 jul 2023

Our documentation explains that if you're seeing your domain or subdomain show, our system isn't confident enough to assign a site name:

However, if our system is less confident in a name you provided, it may sometimes generate site names using other sources or show a domain or subdomain name.

It seems likely the system sees the name you've selected as too generic, as also explained on the page:

Avoid using a generic name. A generic name like "Best Dentists In Iowa" is unlikely to be selected by our system as a site name, unless that's an extremely well-recognized brand name.

Given this, you should look to follow the advice in the troubleshooting section, in particular about providing alternative names to be considered.

Community Manager Matheus. ha recomendado esto

JC Guarina

16 ene 2025

My Websites are all have URL Link display as title even though I have followed everyone's recommendation about setting up your sites and google search console

Última modificación el 16 ene 2025

Ameer Abbas 9938

hace 4 d

I have followed all the guidelines mentioned in the Google policy guide for site names , my sitename still doesnt show up in search results. can someone help with this?

User 10349336574782398922

12 oct 2024

We try to set the site name for our web site https://sv.shopee.co.id to the name "Shopee Video Indonesia".

"@context": "http://schema.org",

"@type": "WebSite",

"url": "https://sv.shopee.co.id",

"name": "Shopee Video Indonesia"

}</script>

We've been making this change for a while, and we found that Google has Crawled it. But Google keeps showing "Shopee Thailand", it is obviously wrong, because this is an Indonesian website. So, what should we do?

For example, this is a result in the search results page：https://sv.shopee.co.id/web/@rulycs1/video/FsbsSwErBgCMkh0TAAAAAA==

User 4224006312138163012

4 nov 2024

Hello all, I have the same problem here,

www.dunkleydigital.com

Can anyone help? It should be ‘Dunkley Digital’

User 10349336574782398922

7 nov 2024

We've added application/ld+json to the homepage (https://sv.shopee.co.id/) to prompt Google to display 'Shopee Video Indonesia' as the site name. However, Google still shows incorrect site names(such as：Shopee Video Malaysia/Shopee Malaysia/Shopee Thailand...).

We've already tried everything on our end, including adding application/ld+json to both the homepage and the page appearing in Google search results.

What else can we do to ensure Google uses 'Shopee Video Indonesia' as the site name?

For example: https://sv.shopee.co.id/web/@adasarisma/video/MMfvyjuXBgBkZicBAAAAAA==

Aljaro Seo

15 oct 2024

Hi There!

We would like to change the site name of our website from aljaro.jp to ALJARO. We have followed all the guidelines provided in the documentation, but Google Search has not yet updated the site name.

Could you please assist us in ensuring that this change is reflected in Google Search? Here is the link to our website for your reference: https://aljaro.jp/. Any support or guidance you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to your prompt response.

This is the schema markup of my website.

<script type="application/ld+json">

{

"@context": "http://schema.org/",

"@type": "WebSite",

"name": "ALJARO",

"alternateName": [

"ALJARO",

"aljaro.jp"

],

"url": "https://aljaro.jp/"

}
</script>

Última modificación el 23 oct 2024

Gagan Ghotra

Miembro Bronce

SEO Consultant

7 nov 2024

Sometimes Google's ranking systems don't trust the sitename schema enough that's why its showing as "travelaway.me" instead of it just being "Travel Away"
Unfortunately following guidelines is a good thing, but Google choosing to respect that and showing site name which you have setup is their choice & there's not much site owners can do about it.

ZachAnderson

7 nov 2024

Yes, this issue has been going on for 2 years now. Google used to pickup/show our site name correctly but then stopped for some reason only they know. I suspect they are confused about which is our actual site because we've been trying to battle a copycat site (same name) in Mexico, so somehow they cannot tell which is the legacy, actual TicketCity site. I appreciate the mods who respond here but seems it would be pretty straightforward for Google to correct this for most site owners.

سباكة و كهربائي Electrical & Plumber

7 nov 2024

Please solution

User 4336085756709571114

10 dic 2024

Google suddenly started showing “DGEG” instead of “دیوار” as the site name in search results. The homepage and some pages display the correct name, “دیوار,” while others show “DGEG.” This is particularly strange since Divar is a major brand in Iran and is recognized as an entity in Google’s Knowledge Graph.

The issue began exactly on the last day of the November 2024 Core Update. We have verified the WebSite structured data on the homepage, og:site_name, titles, headings, and other relevant elements. “DGEG” does not appear anywhere in our page sources (see the attached screenshots illustrating this unusual behavior).

To address this, I changed the name property in the WebSite structured data to “سایت دیوار,” suspecting that the issue might be related to the generic nature of the name, even though “دیوار” is one of the most recognized brands in Iran. Additionally, I added “divar.ir” as the alternateName in the structured data as a last resort, but the issue persists on internal pages.

yoogwonhee

17 dic 2024

https://autoqto.com/ This site also doesn't have the site name '오토적산'. I've tried everything, but I can't solve it

Akash_Verma

18 dic 2024

Hi All,
I have a question and would be very grateful if someone could address it.

I’ve noticed that social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn display custom site names for profile pages.

However, I’m unable to find any documentation on how to configure this.

Can someone help me understand how this works and how we can implement the same?

User 14644161893115378134

2 ene 2025

I've followed the documentation but my client's website shows as "Simio LLC" but we want it to be displayed as "Simio". We've looked and we don't display the "LLC" anywhere on our website.

P Dawg

15 ene 2025

It's weird, right. I checked it, schema is correct. You do have a link to Simio LLC to the Facebook profile, where it also says Simio LLC. Maybe that does soemthing? 🤷🏽‍♂️

P Dawg

14 ene 2025

Update: ~4 weeks after adding the alternateName to the schema, the site name in SERPs is now displaying correctly.

Hi,

our site name for a subdomain is not showing in search results as instructed via (validated) schema. I also added an alternateName with the desired name to tip the scale, but no success so far. The branding to the correct city is quite crucial for search performance here:

It seems understandable, what's going on: the parent domain name, which is branded to Hamburg, is being cascaded to the subdomain. But it shouldn't be, when there's clear schema for the subdomain naming, right?

Thank you!

Última modificación el 10 feb 2025

paulo paulini

5 feb 2025

how to activate my account of ajira portal

LBlack

16 ene 2025

Not only is my sitename wrong for subpages (not the homepage, oddly), it's showing a completely different and unrelated organisation!!

Schema validated and followed documentation steps. HELP!!

User 13454851377605149320

29 ene 2025

Subject: Assistance Required – Incorrect Site Name Displayed in Google Search

Hi,

I’m experiencing an issue with our website https://qphi.org.qa/ in Google search results. When searching for "QPHI", Google incorrectly displays the site name as "Qatar Biobank" instead of the correct name.

Despite multiple recrawls, the incorrect site name persists. We have thoroughly checked our website's code and metadata, and there is no mention of "Qatar Biobank" anywhere.

We need assistance in either removing this incorrect site name or updating it to the correct one. Could you please help us resolve this issue?

Thank you.

Best regards,

Faizan Mansoor

31 ene 2025

I am facing site name related issues as well and would appreciate if someone can help me out.

My website/Saas application name is "SMS Textr". However, the sitename shows up as "Google" instead of "SMS Textr". The url is https://smstextr.web.app.

*We know that this is a google subdomain and that's probably the reason why the site name shows up as "Google" instead of "SMS Textr". However, we've seen multiple sites with the same sitename.web.app url where the sitename shows up correctly (example: https://ezmatch.web.app/).

We have the meta property site_name set as <meta property="og:site_name" content="SMS Textr">

We have added structured data (application/ld+json) with the Organization set to SMS Textr and WebSite set to SMS Textr as well.

We have tried to go to the Google search console and request the homepage be reindexed but nothing seems to work. If anyone has any pointers for us that we can try and get our site name displayed properly as "SMS Textr", it would be greatly appreciated.

Faizan Mansoor

31 ene 2025

Here's a snapshot of the google search result.

Yeon an

13 feb 2025

Hello,

I am experiencing an issue with the site name in search results. I am hosting a website for free using Cloudflare, and while the site is successfully crawled and appears in search results, the displayed site name is "Cloudflare" instead of my intended name.

To resolve this, I added the following code to the main page, but it does not seem to have any effect:

html

{

"@context" : "https://schema.org",

"@type" : "WebSite",

"name" : "xxxx 2025",

"alternateName" : "xxxx 2025",

"url" : "https://xxxx2025.pages.dev"

}

</script>
(Due to privacy concerns, I am unable to share the URL and name)

Is there any way to fix this issue and ensure that the correct site name is displayed in search results?

Thank you!