If in the past you would ask a Phoenix SEO consultant whether a name change in your website is a bad thing, the answer would be a big resounding yes. Name change causes confusion for your regular visitors. Often, they would wonder whether they went to the wrong site, a fake site, or perhaps a hostile takeover site. Either way, they could think it’s not the same company they’ve been going to.
But as the SEO world progresses so does professional SEO marketing. Fact is changes in SEO marketing transmutes so fast; last minute’s rubrics easily become an input in history as the rules to the game always change.
Recently, the issue of name change in websites has come up because of MSNBC’s shift to the URL NBCNews.com. More than anything the change has to do with their split up with Microsoft, which has been producing the website for the TV network.
It has become fodder for talk if this name change will affect the traffic for the network’s website. NBC, though, is scoffing this, stating that everything has remained the same for the site and all links will be redirected to NBCNews.com.
If you ask an SEO consultant now about the issues of name change, he can tell you it’s not always a practice but actually a lot of popular sites have done it without putting a dent on their traffic. Your SEO consultant can even name a few instances.
Here is a few compiled by John Sutter of CNN.
Facebook
Sutter emphasized, though, that, “it’s worth pointing out that the switch occurred before Facebook was a household name.” Facebook was originally called “thefacebook.com”, until, if we’re to believe the movie “The Social Network”, Sean Parker suggested dropping “the” to make the sound cleaner.
IMDB
Cinephiles’ holy land for information on anything about movies, the Internet Movie Database used to be known as rec.arts.movies when they were still under the USENET group. Now owned by Amazon, it has become the Wikipedia for films.
PayPal
Who doesn’t know PayPal? It’s like a household name when you’ve been squatting in the world of Internet. It comprises everything on online payment from shopping to remittance of salary to practically anything. But before it was PayPal, it used to be X.com in 1999.
Sutter wrote, “According to PayPal’s official blog, the “X” was a reference to that ‘universally recognized programming variable’ — a reference to innovation and creation. This may be the only example of a site’s URL actually getting less cool because of a change.”
Do you have an X account? Yeah, that would have sounded cool.
Twitter
When Twitter was started in 2006, it began as Twttr because the Twitter name already existed as a website for bird enthusiasts. It was only when Twitter started profiting that they were able to buy the rest of the vowels.
So now you know the wonderful history of website name changes. You wouldn’t be so scared of the transition if need be. But as your Phoenix SEO consultant would probably tell you, you should always have a good reason for changing it.
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