Imagine you have been in business, operating on the web for years now. Your name is unique and it ranks number one in the Google results, since it is unique. But then imagine a new site pops up that is similar to your name. Then soon after, Google decided that your name is really not what people want, instead, they want the other name.
In other words, they type in your business name and Google say - no no, you spelled it wrong, you want a competitor or another web site. Google then hides your web site and shows the competitor. How would you feel?
That is the story of a Google Webmaster Help thread. The owner of BrandFreek no longer comes up for a search on [brandfreek], instead, Google shows a result for BrandFreak and shows BrandFreak.com in the first spot. Here is a picture:
This can be pretty upsetting to the owner of the company and also hurt them financially. Google knows this. JohnMu at Google replied to the thread saying:
Thanks for posting! I'll pass your feedback on to the team to review.
I am not sure if Google will change the behavior of this search in the future, but I think they should.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
