When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup
masschallenge.org
When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup
1–10 of 56 posts
Re: When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup
#2[deleted]
Re: When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup
#3It must be a tough call whether to battle on with a four/five letter miss-spell, or change to something longer. Obviously locately is much better though.
Re: When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup
#4It is tough acquiring a short (under 8 letter) meaningful domain name now. I am curious to know how much it cost just to buy that domain. Sometimes you can make a nonsensical name stick with enough effort/branding: see zillow.com, it is all in the sub title.
Re: When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup
#5Sounds like the author had some human-centric reasons for changing the name of the business. It's worth noting that Google can be taught to like invented names in a pretty short amount of time, though.
Three of my four iPhone projects shipped with invented words for names (Oddage, Tallymander, Globejot). Even after the sites were live and indexed, Google would do its "did you mean..." or worse, showing results for the word it thought I meant by default.
So, searching for Tallymander, for example, would give you "Showing results for Sallymander" for the first two results.
With any amount of press or other web conversation that generates inbound links, though, this problem ends up taking care of itself. About a week after launch, Google recognized each word as legitimate and I enjoyed top ranking.
Re: When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup
#6I feel the blame is very much misplaced; Google had nothing to do with the viability of "Cadio" name. It was inevitable that people would confuse it with "Cardio", whether Google auto-suggested it or not.
That said, I do sympathy for the difficulty in finding short, easily spelled domain names. It's been downright ridiculous trying to find good names in recent years.
Re: When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup
#7Sounds like the author had some human-centric reasons for changing the name of the business. It's worth noting that Google can be taught to like invented names in a pretty short amount of time, though. Three of my four iPhone projects shipped with invented words for names (Oddage, Tallymander, Globejot). Even after the sites were live and indexed, Google would do its "did you mean..." or worse, showing results for th…
Thanks for sharing this experience, the Cadio->Cardio thing was scaring the heck out of me.
Re: When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup
#8Also ask yourself:
Can spell it out to somebdy over the phone without resorting to phonetic alphabet?
Do you use numbers in the name - worse do you use them to be cute ?
Do you mix words that sound like letters eg. "see" and "c" in the name ?
Does the name contain a joke/pun/double meaning that only makes sense written down or read outloud?
Re: When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup
#9I actually thought the problem was with masschallenge.org before reading the article. Added the idea to my domain buying checklist.
Re: When Google Hates Your Name: Why We Renamed Our Startup
#10Sounds like the author had some human-centric reasons for changing the name of the business. It's worth noting that Google can be taught to like invented names in a pretty short amount of time, though. Three of my four iPhone projects shipped with invented words for names (Oddage, Tallymander, Globejot). Even after the sites were live and indexed, Google would do its "did you mean..." or worse, showing results for th…
This is determined probabilistically, so as you get more coverage (and links) the term occurs more often on the web, thus making it less likely that it was a misspelling.
I imagine link text might be given more weight over regular text, but I am not sure. Anyone know for sure?