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.
When i search for my domain name - google asks "did you mean" - why?
-
Hi all,
I just noticed something quite odd - if i do a search for my domain name (see: http://goo.gl/LBc1lz) google shows my domain as first result, but it also asks "did i mean" and names another website with very similar name.
the other site has far lower PA/DA according to Moz, any ideas why google is doing this? and more inportantly how i could stop it?
please advise
James
-
Hi, thanks for the answers so far...
Although i understand what you are saying - and why google would want to use the "did you mean" feature.
I disagree that, in this case, its simply google tryin to help searchers - Why? if it was just because our domains are so close - litterally just 1 letter different, then in theory if i did the same search but for the other website - it would say "did you mean: my website"?
http://goo.gl/yphgxE but it doesnt...
This to me, means there is some kind of problem - devaluation of my website - so much so, google thinks if you search my domain name, you have searched it by mistake?
Can anyone shed some more light on this? any advice welcome
-
Whatever I am about to discuss is purely hypothetical and if anyone have a better understanding of it I would love to hear this answer from them but this is what I believe how this should work.
The whole idea of “did you mean” feature is to provide better search experience to user and give them the right options when they mistakenly write the wrong word. When it comes to spellings it should be easy to guess that they are getting the right spellings from dictionary but when it comes to the correct spelling of the brand they in my opinion are guessing the user behavior.
I search my own brand on Google with a wrong ccTLD “setalks.co.uk” and it says “did you mean: setalks.com” (the correct version of my domain) and I don’t see any other reason but because I have different quality and relevant website linking back to me with my domain name, brand name and mentions.
Again, I am not sure but if you get link or even mention from authority and relevant sources to your website with the anchor text of your URL or brand name probably Google will learn better about your domain name.
I know the PA and DA of your domain is better but still getting more quality links will only help. Also, social media can also help so try and share your products on social media as well and see if this solves your problem.
Hope this helps!
-
Googles main objective is making search easy and providing the best search results. That being said, Google is offering the other search example because it is so close to your domain name that they think it's possible it could be a mistake when searched. Google is trying to give the user the option to click just once and get to the correct website. Google would rather the user not have to click the wrong website and have to click back if they can prevent it.
So it's just Googles way of providing a better search experience. Sorry that answer does not help your situation. It happens to many website owners who have similar website domain names as other websites.
Hope this helps you understand why this is happening,
Joe
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
-
How do internal search results get indexed by Google?
Hi all, Most of the URLs that are created by using the internal search function of a website/web shop shouldn't be indexed since they create duplicate content or waste crawl budget. The standard way to go is to 'noindex, follow' these pages or sometimes to use robots.txt to disallow crawling of these pages. The first question I have is how these pages actually would get indexed in the first place if you wouldn't use one of the options above. Crawlers follow links to index a website's pages. If a random visitor comes to your site and uses the search function, this creates a URL. There are no links leading to this URL, it is not in a sitemap, it can't be found through navigating on the website,... so how can search engines index these URLs that were generated by using an internal search function? Second question: let's say somebody embeds a link on his website pointing to a URL from your website that was created by an internal search. Now let's assume you used robots.txt to make sure these URLs weren't indexed. This means Google won't even crawl those pages. Is it possible then that the link that was used on another website will show an empty page after a while, since Google doesn't even crawl this page? Thanks for your thoughts guys.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Is possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using Google Search Console?
We have a client that will not grant us access to their Google Search Console (don't ask us why). Is there anyway possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using GSC? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
How to maximize CTR from Google image search?
I'm getting good, solid growth in my Google SERPs and Google search traffic now, but I do notice that 70% of my high ranking search results are images and the CTR on those is only 3-4%. All my images are illustrative and highly relevant to my travel blog, but I guess that hardly matters unless they get CTR so people see them in context. Has anyone seen or done any good research on what makes people click through on Google Image Search results? What are the key factors? How do you optimize for click-through? Is it better to watermark your images or overlay label them to increase likelihood of click-through? Thanks, Tony FYI the travel blog in question is www.asiantraveltips.com and a relevant Google search where I rank highly is "songkran 2016 phuket".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Reverting back to old domain name.
I've recently been asked by a client if I can foresee any issues with reverting back to their original domain name. With the original domain name they had a pretty decent DA for their sector which they have now lost. Although I do appreciate that over time this might come back, the CEO is very keen to switch back to the old domain. They do currently have 301 redirects from the old domain to the new and have implemented rel canonical. As yet they have not notified Google of the change of address using Webmaster Tools. Can anyone forsee any issues with returning back to the old domain name? They have only been using the new domain name for a couple of months which currently has a DA for 1.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Macrofireball0 -
Weird 404 URL Problem - domain name being placed at end of urls
Hey there. For some reason when doing crawl tests I'm finding pages with the domain name being tacked on the end and causing 404 errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay328
For example: http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname.com This is happening to all pages, posts and even category type 1. Site is in Wordpress
2. Using Yoast SEO plugin Any suggestions? Thanks!0 -
Should I redirect my Google Update Effected Domain to brand new Domain?
Hey Moz experts, I had a domain which was really doing better but after the Humming Bird update my traffic was decreased up to 90%. There are plenty of posts on my existing blog, Now what should I do? I mean should I redirect it to a brand new domain or Copy all the posts to a brand new domain and delete my existing domain? Note that the Old domain has PR1, DA 19 and PA 30.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imran20780 -
Can too many "noindex" pages compared to "index" pages be a problem?
Hello, I have a question for you: our website virtualsheetmusic.com includes thousands of product pages, and due to Panda penalties in the past, we have no-indexed most of the product pages hoping in a sort of recovery (not yet seen though!). So, currently we have about 4,000 "index" page compared to about 80,000 "noindex" pages. Now, we plan to add additional 100,000 new product pages from a new publisher to offer our customers more music choice, and these new pages will still be marked as "noindex, follow". At the end of the integration process, we will end up having something like 180,000 "noindex, follow" pages compared to about 4,000 "index, follow" pages. Here is my question: can this huge discrepancy between 180,000 "noindex" pages and 4,000 "index" pages be a problem? Can this kind of scenario have or cause any negative effect on our current natural SEs profile? or is this something that doesn't actually matter? Any thoughts on this issue are very welcome. Thank you! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Using the Word "Free" in Metadata
Hi Forum! I've searched previous questions, and couldn't find anything related to this. I know the word "free" when used in email marketing can trigger spam filters. If I use the word "free" in my metadata (title tag, description, and keywords just for fun) will I be penalized in any way? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0
