Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Spam in search engine results for company brand name
-
Hi,
I'm having a strange problem with a certain comapny.
When you Google their brand name the first 8 results or so are related - their site, Google+ page, Twitter etc. The rest of the results are completely unrelated to the site and much of it is in another language and looks really spammy.
According to the site owner until recently the first 50-60 results were related - mostly local results, press releases, and franchise companies listing his business. They don't have a great link profile but that shouldn't have them dropping out of the results, especially since they're still ranking in the top 1-8 positions.
Here's the strangest part: the company name is Libertana. All the spammy results are not so much spammy, they're related to the syllable "na". Examples:
- Ivanyukite-Na Mineral Data
- įt$koka!na's sounds on SoundCloud - Hear the world's sounds
- Bosiniya na Herizegovina - Wikipedia
What on earth is going on? Why would they rank for the last syllable of their name?
-
Perhaps a competitor or hacker are trying to displace them from the search results? One of the 'spam' results has "2,427 links to this URL from the past 32 days" according to Open Site Explorer - have you checked to see if any of that anchor text is the company name? I don't have full access to Moz at the moment so can't see.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site Architecture for Sub-Brands
I am working on launching a few industry specific sub-brands for our marketing agency and am trying to figure out the best way to deliver a tailored user experience using subfolders instead of subdomains, if this is indeed the best option... Since I am trying to provide separate experiences, I looking at housing microsites in sub-folders - say /technology or /medical. Each with its own navigation, home page, and industry specific content/blog/portfolio. A couple things I am considering: Will my microsite "home pages" and site pages rank as well in a sub-folder versus if they were actually the primary pages on their own sub-domain? Will separate Wordpress and theme installs and separate primary navigations have any affect on SEO if they are in sub-folders of the same site? Thanks in advance for any input. I really appreciate it!
Branding | | Alaniz0 -
Where Does Google Pull the Photo From When You Search For Your Brand?
Hi All, In doing a search for our brand from our corporate HQ (Learning Tree), I came across a large embedded "ad" so to speak on the right hand side front and center of one of our locations (see attached photo). Clearly this is from Google's Knowledge Graph. We aren't pleased with the photo of a computer screen pulling randomly from our website...we are OK with the map listing though. Anyway to change this? As a note, when you search for "Learning Tree International" (our more official name as the entity as a whole - we have many locations around the world, and also one near our corporate HQ, which is the one that's displaying when you search "Learning Tree" alone), much better imagery of our logo is displayed. That's coming from our corporate G+ page. Any suggestions? Thank you. s0C5ZpT&hXaLhE7 s0C5ZpT&hXaLhE7#1
Branding | | CSawatzky0 -
Should I remove spaces from my brand name?
I'm looking for some second opinions on this one. In talking with another SEO, he is of the opinion that if my company name is two words like Crazy Man, I should write some news release that have my brand combined as Crazyman because it is a variant of the brand name. He claims that Google does not look at my brand as Crazy Man, but as one word and in Google's mind Crazyman as one word is my brand. What do you all think?
Branding | | kadesmith1 -
How to improve the quality score (QS) when bidding on competitor brand names in Google Adwords?
Hi, I have researched few sites on this topic and I could see that the competitor keyword should match with the add text relevance, landing page relevance and CTR. Any other factors more to be included to improve the quality score? Reference: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2285536/Google-Updates-How-AdWords-Quality-Score-is-Reported
Branding | | zco_seo0 -
Drop In Branded Traffic
Hi, We took on a new client in March. Over the last few months I have noticed that their Branded Organic Traffic has dropped off considerably, around 20%. On further investigation I discovered that the drop off occurred between Jan & Feb this year (prior to us taking over). In Jan they launched a new site, the drop off seems to coincide with the launch of their new website. I also found out that their Page Rank had disappeared before the launch of the new website, and is still a PR/na. My first thought was that they have been penalised. How likely is this on a very well known site which gets roughly 170K visits per month? Could the drop in Branded Traffic be due to a decrease in advertising budget elsewhere (to compensate for the cost of the new website, leading to less brand exposure)? Could it be that there are just fewer people searching for their Brand? I guess the questions I am trying to find out are: 1. What are the reasons for massive drops in Branded organic traffic? 2. As an seo I am tasked mainly for optimising for non-branded organic traffic, is there anything I can suggest to the client to help get this traffic back? 3. If it is an algorithmic penalty (Panda, Penguin), how do I know which one? I have started with their links and disavowed known toxic links, fixed crawl errors, optimised their top pages etc etc. If it was a penalty and I mange to fix it, will their branded traffic return? Any help with the above would be greatly appreciated. Jon
Branding | | JonRaubenheimer0 -
Do Dashes in Domain names hurt SEO ranking?
I have found conflicting reports online whether or not dashes in domain names hurt/help ranking. Example yourbrandonline.com vs your-brand-online.com? I found Rand's write up on how to select a domain and he suggests staying away from hyphens but mainly because its hard to remember or people my enter it in wrong. Here's his comment. "Reject Hyphens and Numbers
Branding | | JoshKimber
Both hyphens and numbers make it hard to give your domain name verbally and falls down on being easy to remember or type. I'd suggest not using spelled-out or roman numerals in domains, as both can be confusing and mistaken for the other." Aside from people possibly struggling to get there directly because of the domain name, are they OK to use? Or, are domains with hyphens considered spammy? Thanks in advance.1 -
Dental Office With Two Locations And Same Practice Name
Dentists buy other practices all the time. Sometimes they change the name of the practice and other times they keep the name. I am working with a dentist on a new website because their old one is riddled with flash (and is ugly too) She has two practices but they have the same practice name. One of them caters to half English speaking and half Spanish speaking patients. I'm thinking I should create a separate website for each practice mainly because we may want to design the graphics and text for the appropriate patient language probably with a English/Spanish translation button on the website? For localization, wouldn't it be better to have a url for each physical site? Suggestions?
Branding | | Czubmeister0 -
Looking for examples of a B2B brand spinning off B2C products on to separate websites
Does anyone have any good examples or case studies? Right now I'm working on a site with both B2B and B2C products crowded onto one site. I'd love to find some examples of companies that have built their online B2B brand separately from their consumer products. I found the Constructive Playthings case study on Marketing Sherpa but nothing else.
Branding | | TexaSEO0