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Sometimes people change their names, for legal reasons, maybe when they get married, maybe they go from a pseudonym to using their real name. What do you do if you change your name or your author on your web site changes their name - how will Google handle it from an SEO perspective?
John Mueller of Google was asked that on Twitter by Michael, the question was "what happens If the writer of a blog has been using a pseudonym for years but now wants to use his/her real name in the author section? Will this send a negative signal to the algorithm due to the change?"
John Mueller of Google responded that there is not much to do then just change the name across your website, and other websites that person has published. Be consistent, make the name change on all sites and Google probably will pick up on the change. John said "For most cases, there's probably not much to do other than change the name (eg, if it's all on your website). For bigger cases, including legal name changes (eg, scientific literature, content/references across the web), I'd try to make things as consistent as possible."
Here are those tweets:
For most cases, there's probably not much to do other than change the name (eg, if it's all on your website). For bigger cases, including legal name changes (eg, scientific literature, content/references across the web), I'd try to make things as consistent as possible.
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) November 30, 2021
I don't believe I've ever seen an SEO case study on this happening before.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
