With the updates to Site names last week, Google decided to post a revised set of questions, FAQs, resources, support and timelines on the whole Google Search site name bit in the Google Webmaster Help forums.
This was posted by John Mueller of Google but also Danny Sullivan of Google is active in these threads.
Here is the revised post - you can compare it to the old one from May over here. I'll copy the revised one here, just in case one day it goes missing:
Site names timeline
- October 2022: Site names for the domain level were introduced for mobile search results for English, French, German and Japanese.
- April 2023: Site names were added for desktop for the same set of languages. Later in this month, we also released an update to how our system selected site names.
- May 2023: Site names support was added on the subdomain level for the same set of languages and on mobile search results only.
- July 2023: Site names support was added on the subdomain level for the same set of languages for desktop search results. We also released a further improvement in how our system selects site names and updated our documentation. See our blog post for more.
Resources & Support
Provide a site name to Google Search is our guidance about how to help us understand what site name to show for your site. We encourage you to review that guidance to resolve any issues, especially the troubleshooting section.If you have followed that guidance and still aren’t seeing your preferred site name, feel free to share your situation below. In particular, provide your site’s home page URL, the site name you expected to see and the site name you actually see.
Please note: We do not use reports in this thread to make specific changes for particular sites. Instead, we use the reports to understand how to make general improvements to our system that generates site names.
FAQ
Below are some questions we’ve had. We may add to these over time.Q: Why is my URL is showing instead of a site name?
A: If your URL is showing rather than a site name, this doesn’t represent an error but instead that our systems aren’t confident enough to show a site name for your site. This can be for a variety of reasons and might change over time. Consult our guidance and ensure you’re making use of your preferred site name in the areas that help us determine this.
Q: Why is my site that’s in a subdirectory is not showing my preferred site name?
A: Site names are not supported for subdirectories (for example, https://example.com/news is a subdirectory-level home page and cannot have its own site name). See our technical guidance for more.
Q: Why is my site name on my home page not appearing on or is different from what shows for my internal pages?
A: This is a known issue in some cases that we’re working to address. Please see our documentation for more.
I figured some of you would want to see this thread.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help forums.
