I am seeing some complaints within the local SEO community about a surge or spike in name changes happening to Google Business Profiles. It is unclear how widespread the issue is, or if there is a pattern to the issue or not - at least at this point in time.
A thread in the Local Search Forum has some local SEOs complaining about this. Here are some of those posts:
We are seeing a huge increase in name updates on GBP for various clients. And it's super weird---to a point where some are being updated with misspellings of the name (some coming in as updates are missing a letter). These are all different clients in different GBP dashboards so it is NOT a dashboard issue
I wouldn't say I'm seeing a rise in name updates, I'm seeing a steady stream of them. (At least a few every day.)
For us, there were definitely some waves of name edits (can't date them exactly as there was a lengthy lapse during which no one was assigned to review google edits) in March and/or April that affected an unusually high number of Roofers and HVAC contractors specifically.
Yup, I faced the same problem with three of my clients — and guess what? They were all running LSAs. The name difference between the LSA and the GBP is a major issue.
The name changes, according to one local SEO, can go like this:
- Current Correct Name: Bright Commercial Cleaning
- GBP Updates to: Right Commercial Cleaning or Bight Commercial Cleaning
Are you noticing this too?
Forum discussion at Local Search Forum.
