Business name: a keyword for Google or a brand with soul?

Every so often someone sits across the table from us with a domain they've already paid for. It's long, it's a string of search terms, and it says exactly what they sell and where. “I got it for Google,” they explain.

And every time, we ask the same question: when someone asks what your business is called, will you answer with a search query?

A name is the first brand decision you make and the most expensive one to change later. This piece is for anyone still standing before that decision: what a name really does for SEO in 2026, where the keyword still counts, and why the taste of a name is worth more than the words it carries.

Google stopped reading domains 14 years ago

There was a time when the trick worked. You bought a domain with the phrase you wanted, added a bit of copy and climbed the rankings. In late September 2012 Google closed that door with the so-called EMD update, a filter aimed at sites that had the keyword in the domain and nothing behind it.

Google's position hasn't moved since. John Mueller has said it every way possible: a word in your domain doesn't make your site more relevant for that word. And he added something that isn't even SEO, just business sense. Businesses change, and moving domains is hard. If your name is “blue widgets” and tomorrow you start making red ones, what do you do?

Today rankings come from content, links, reviews and user experience. Not from the characters before the dot.

What a phrase-name costs you

1. 01Nobody remembers you. They remember the category. The customer who found you once will type the same phrase into Google next time and find your competitor.
2. 02You don't own it. Words that describe what you sell generally can't be registered as a trademark. The shop next door launches the same phrase with a hyphen, and you have no recourse.
3. 03It locks you in. Opened in a second city? Added a service? Your name starts lying the day you start growing.
4. 04It gets spelled five ways. Every ambiguous letter is a potential lost visit, and every phone call becomes a small spelling lesson.
5. 05It looks like spam. Users have learned that long descriptive domains are usually aggregators or affiliate sites. They see one in the results and scroll past.

The one place the keyword still counts

To be fair, there is one: Google Maps. In September 2026 Whitespark analysed more than 1.4 million business listings across 17 industries. Listings with the keyword in their Google Business Profile name made the map's top three between two and five times more often than those without it.

The gap varies hugely by industry. In tourism, the keyword in the name nearly quintuples your chances. In real estate it gives one of the smallest lifts in the entire dataset.

Before you rush to change your sign, three details.

• We're talking about the Business Profile name, not the domain.
• We're talking about correlation, not proof.
• Google's guidelines require the profile name to be your real one, the name on your sign and your paperwork. Add words that aren't part of your name and you risk losing them, along with your credibility.

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So the question isn't keyword or brand. It's how to build a name with soul that leaves room for one word that works.

Three things a name that lasts has

The clearest example in our home market is one every Greek opens daily. A price-comparison site named after literature's stingiest character. A smile, a story and a positioning in one word. Skroutz started as price comparison and today is Greece's leading marketplace, with lockers, its own delivery network and a presence in Romania and Bulgaria. Had it been called compare-prices.gr, it would have stayed a price-comparison site.

The same goes abroad. Amazon started as Cadabra. Bezos changed it after his lawyer heard it over the phone as “cadaver”. He chose the name of the world's largest river for a shop that back then sold only books. The name didn't say what it sold. It said how big it meant to become.

And yes, some descriptive names have won. Booking.com is the best known. Except that behind it sit billions in marketing that gave it meaning. For a local business, a descriptive name is a hurdle to overcome, not an advantage.

Soul first, keyword beside it

The approach we recommend to our clients is simple. The name carries the soul. A category word, where the industry calls for it, carries the search.

“Salt” doesn't say what you do. “Salt Suites” does, and loses none of its taste. We're called Octopush: octo, push and an octopus. Nowhere does it say what we do, which is why our full name is Octopush Digital Agency. Soul first, category beside it.

Domain

The name only, on your country domain and .com.

Registered name & signage

Name plus category word, if you want a lift on the map. That way your Business Profile tells the truth.

Title tags, H1s, service pages

This is where keywords live. This is where Google actually reads them.

Google Business Profile

Exactly your real business name, the right primary category, reviews arriving steadily.

One more thing, for today. When someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI Mode who to trust, the answer is names. Names repeated in reviews, articles and conversations. A phrase-name struggles to become a reference, because it looks like the question itself. A name with soul stands out in the text.

Six questions before you pay for the domain

Tick every question you can honestly answer yes to. 6/6: you have a name, register the domains today. 4–5: close, work on the “no” answers before you pay for anything. 0–3: keep your wallet shut.

The “soul” nobody understands

There's an opposite mistake too, and we see it just as often. Brand doesn't mean a random word that sounds cool. An “i” in front and a “U” at the end, missing vowels, puns that only work in one language. That isn't soul. It's fashion, and fashion has an expiry date.

A name has soul when it has a reason to exist. When you can explain why you're called what you're called, and the explanation says something about where you're going.

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