When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup

http://www.masschallenge.org/blog/when-google-hates-your-name-why-we-renamed-our-startup

by robg • 16 years ago

85 48 16 years ago

AlexMuir• 16 years ago

It must be a tough call whether to battle on with a four/five letter miss-spell, or change to something longer. Obviously locately is much better though.

greg_holsclaw• 16 years ago

It is tough acquiring a short (under 8 letter) meaningful domain name now. I am curious to know how much it cost just to buy that domain. Sometimes you can make a nonsensical name stick with enough effort/branding: see zillow.com, it is all in the sub title.

iuyhgtfvgbhjn• 16 years ago

Supposedly the 'internet generation' are now savy enough to know this.

If you launch a site called "sport.com" or "music.com" young people know that however hip and trendy your graphics you must be a bank/$Bn corp to own that name. So to appeal to 'yoof' you have to have a "the only address we could get" type meaningless name ( even if you are a $Bn corp!)

danilocampos2• 16 years ago

Sounds like the author had some human-centric reasons for changing the name of the business. It's worth noting that Google can be taught to like invented names in a pretty short amount of time, though.

Three of my four iPhone projects shipped with invented words for names (Oddage, Tallymander, Globejot). Even after the sites were live and indexed, Google would do its "did you mean..." or worse, showing results for the word it thought I meant by default.

So, searching for Tallymander, for example, would give you "Showing results for Sallymander" for the first two results.

With any amount of press or other web conversation that generates inbound links, though, this problem ends up taking care of itself. About a week after launch, Google recognized each word as legitimate and I enjoyed top ranking.

MartinCron• 16 years ago

Thanks for sharing this experience, the Cadio->Cardio thing was scaring the heck out of me.

jaf656s• 16 years ago

This is determined probabilistically, so as you get more coverage (and links) the term occurs more often on the web, thus making it less likely that it was a misspelling.

I imagine link text might be given more weight over regular text, but I am not sure. Anyone know for sure?

richardhenry2• 16 years ago

I found this pretty quickly with Cursebird.

danilocampos2• 16 years ago

Did you mean custard? Showing results for custard. Click here to see results for cursebird.

Ah, Google.

matrix• 16 years ago

I feel the blame is very much misplaced; Google had nothing to do with the viability of "Cadio" name. It was inevitable that people would confuse it with "Cardio", whether Google auto-suggested it or not.

That said, I do sympathy for the difficulty in finding short, easily spelled domain names. It's been downright ridiculous trying to find good names in recent years.

bryanh• 16 years ago

I spend weeks and weeks deciding on a name. So far I've had Rankiac and BitBuffet, both of which were almost 80% completed before I ever had the domain. EveryMentor wasn't available and I had to WAIT for the domain to expire for about 20ish days (it was pending deletion).

fghjhgbvf• 16 years ago

Also ask yourself:

Can spell it out to somebdy over the phone without resorting to phonetic alphabet?

Do you use numbers in the name - worse do you use them to be cute ?

Do you mix words that sound like letters eg. "see" and "c" in the name ?

Does the name contain a joke/pun/double meaning that only makes sense written down or read outloud?

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

> fghjhgbvf

I rest my case ;)

Good advice otherwise though, another one is make sure that the people in the major markets can pronounce the word in an unambiguous way.

quanticle2• 16 years ago

I don't know, I like fhqwhgads more (http://www.homestarrunner.com/fhqwhgads.html).

iaskwhy• 16 years ago

I actually thought the problem was with masschallenge.org before reading the article. Added the idea to my domain buying checklist.

quizbiz• 16 years ago

I am doing SEO consulting for a company called South-Pak that makes custom travel and road cases. Obviously, the business owners don't want to change the name and obviously Google thinks it's a misspelling of South Park (if you query South-Pak, you must then click on the link to confirm that you are looking for results for South-Pak.

Combatting the fact that many are searching for the name of the company and getting frustrated, I'm working hard to associate South-Pak with the word cases. As a result of the anchor text, et al, when one types in South-Pak you should, South-Pak Cases should be one of the options generated by Google Instant.

As long as you have the .com domain though, Google can't hurt you much. Fundamentally, you want to have the .com domain, have a name that is difficult to misspell and easy to explain on the phone.

If people that don't know about your name and they are looking for you, they should be able to find you on Google. That's what Google is for. If that's not the case, it's probably you, not Google.

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

> easy to explain on the phone

So many people forget about that one, it's really important. Of course all the rest is also important, but one of the major drivers of viral traffic is still people telling other people about your product, in person or on the telephone.

spokey• 16 years ago

Out of curiosity, is there another way to pronounce "cadio" other than cad-e-o?

pchristensen• 16 years ago

cade-e-o (sounds like radio)

cod-e-o (sounds like audio)

acabal• 16 years ago

KAY-dee-oh, kah-DEE-oh, KAH-dee-oh, kaa-DIE-oh...

DotSauce2• 16 years ago

Why do these articles never mention the aftermarket? It's like businesses refuse to acknowledge that good domains are available to purchase. Sedo? Afternic? BuyDomains? Auctions? Personal portfolios? Wake up! This is where the real gems are.

Domain finder tools are dead. They don't work.

chc2• 16 years ago

It's like bootstrapped businesses don't want to pay $10000 for a marginally better name.

DotSauce2• 16 years ago

http://auctions.godaddy.com - $5 bargain bin

http://sedo.com - "Make an offer" on thousands of keyword names

http://freshdrop.net - Filter and sort pretty much every marketplace.

http://BrandStack.com

drewvolpe3• 16 years ago

I'm the author. We actually bought Locately.com. We looked at both new domains and ones that were being sold for less than $5k (tip: the listing price is always way above what the owner is actually willing to sell it for).

Of all of the names we came up with, we liked Locately.com the best and so we worked out a deal with the owner. Having a good name is important and definitely worth the small amount of money we paid for it.

CWIZO• 16 years ago

To me, Cadio is much better than Locately (I brake my tongue trying to pronounce it). Easier to remember, spell and pronounce. English is not my native language so that might be the reason why I think that.

wheaties• 16 years ago

When I read your name the first time I read "locality" and then I realized it was something different. You might run into yet another human centric reason for not liking your name.

charlief• 16 years ago

I agree, also on the pronunciation front, I am assuming: Low-kate-LEE

Try saying that 10 times fast, the ending in the last two syllables make it a bit of a tongue twister.

What about other possibilities that seem like often-occurring interpretations?

Low-Kate-{soft eh}-LEE

Low-CAT-{soft eh}-LY

losvedir• 16 years ago

Interesting. It jumps out at me as low-KATE-lee, growing up speaking California English. (If by caps you're indicating putting the emphasis on that syllable.)

seldo• 16 years ago

While much of this is good advice, the "name that says what you do" is tricky. Product names should say what they do, but companies sometimes find it more useful to remain vague.

Consider: Yahoo, Google, eBay, Amazon. None of these words had, when invented, any associations in the public mind. This allows those companies to grow and change their brands and their focus.

Imagine if Amazon had been called "Bookery". Or if Google were called "Searchio". Great names for what those companies started doing, completely misleading now -- especially in Amazon's case.

ig1• 16 years ago

One of the biggest mobile phone retailers in the UK is called "Carphone Warehouse" - people don't think twice about the name. People treat the name as a brand rather than a literal interpretation of the words that make up the brand.

barrkel• 16 years ago

However, they seem to think the understandability of the name is important. Internationally, they are more likely to be known as "The Phone House".

jcurbo• 16 years ago

Well, "amazon" is from Greek mythology and wasn't really invented recently, but the rest of your point still stands.

agravier• 16 years ago

It was possibly mostly associated with the river in people's mind at launch time. Amazon is a smart name, exotic rivers and books go well together.

quanticle2• 16 years ago

Not to mention those that changed their names into made-up words: Standard Oil of New Jersey -> Exxon.

chopsueyar3• 16 years ago

If Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay were late-comers (much later to Google's search dominance), would these companies have used these names?

Particularly now, I would assume it is much more difficult to "brand" a company (a search engine, auction site, or super-powered ecommerce site) with so much disparate media, particularly with Google as the gatekeeper. Newspapers, television, and radio does not have the impact it once had.

Amazon was the only name based off of a real noun. Whenever I buy from Amazon, I still wonder what the name has to do with the business (besides being the largest river and having alphabetical priority).

It is interesting to watch Google's influence on business names, particularly for local businesses.

Unfortunately, for most businesses today, the public mind is "censored" by Google search reslts. Not intentionally, but because Google knows better than you.

Name your businesss after popular search queries.

It is better to name your restaurant "townname foodtype", rather than anything unqiue.

springfield bar b q vs. tex's bbq pit springfield chinese vs dragon phoenix springfield plastic surgery vs

brc• 16 years ago

I made all these mistakes as well, but continue to soldier on with my original name. Google has grudgingly accepted it and the mis-directed traffic is quite minimal now.

One thing the author didn't mention was that when you're getting a lot of mispell traffic, it plays havoc with your traffic stats, and it gets very hard to move the needle testing different content because you might have 60-70% of your traffic in the early days boucing immediately.

philfreo• 16 years ago

Domize (https://domize.com/) and Wordoid (http://wordoid.com/) both seem really useful

maguay2• 16 years ago

My site Techinch.com came up first for "techinch" with no problems on Google until they switched to instant search. Now it says "Showing results for techniche. Search instead for techinch" Grrrr

So would you recomend sticking it out, or trying for a new name? Just a small blog right now, but I definately want it to grow...

drewvolpe3• 16 years ago

If you like your name then I wouldn't switch. Techniche is not that common a search term and as you start to get more traffic and mentions, you should be able to overcome it quickly.

In our case, "cardio" is a very common search term. Also, we didn't like our name for the other reasons given (hard to pronounce, doesn't say what we do, not memorable).

maguay2• 16 years ago

Thanks for the encouragement. Yes, I like it, and think I'll stick with it. I can defiantly see why your former name could have problems in search, and it turns out that Techniche is a tech conference in India this year ... who knew? So hey, should work itself out over time.

jasonkester• 16 years ago

As to the Pronounceable, Spellable, Memorable bit... That can't be emphasized enough. Actually, I bet you can find me personally emphasizing it a half dozen times if you do a search here.

But I don't buy the Google part.

I personally run a little startup that had no trouble ranking for its own name, despite the fact that the first Google search we ever did for the name resulted in "Did you mean Twiddle?" That only lasted a few months.

Now we've crowded that poor word completely off the results for our name, and we've even kicked it out of the top slot when searching for "twiddle". I won't be surprised when Google starts coming back with "Showing results for Twiddla. Search instead for Twiddle" for that search.

It just takes a bit of time and exposure.

cammil• 16 years ago

A couple of other factors that we considered:

1. The spelling should be obvious from the pronunciation.

2. Should have as few syllables as possible. Two is great if you can find one.

Nate75Sanders• 16 years ago

I'll make no comments about the SEO viability of the name, but I find these ending-in-"ly" names (I've seen a few of them recently) atrocious. An "ly" is one of the strongest markers in the English language for a part of speech: an adverb. When you make an adverb out of something that shouldn't be, you get something that sounds like it was uttered by a 3-year-old.

daychilde• 16 years ago

I feel agreely with you.

chopsueyar3• 16 years ago

Good thing you realized this in the beginning.

When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup

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