Google has fixed an issue where some internal pages would not show the proper Site name in the Google Search results. This has been an issue since at least December 2023 and is now resolved.
What changed. Google updated its site names documentation today to remove the “known issue” section that read:
In some cases, a site name shown for a home page may not have propagated to appear for other pages on that site. For example, example.com might be showing a site name that’s different from example.com/internal-page.html.
We’re actively working to address this. We will update this help page when this issue is resolved. In the meantime, if your home page is showing the site name you prefer, understand that it should also appear for your internal pages eventually.
Here is a screenshot of that section:
Still see the issue. You may still see this issue on some sites, that is because that it can take time for Google to reprocess all of the pages on a specific site. Google wrote in the updated documentation, “Not seeing your preferred site name for internal pages? If your home page is already showing your preferred site name, remember to also allow time for Google to recrawl and process your internal pages.”
Site names still may have other lingering issues, as we covered here.
Site names timeline. Here is the timeline Google posted of the evolution of site names since it launched in October:
- October 2022: Site names for the domain level were introduced for mobile search results for English, French, German and Japanese.
- April 2023 (I have this as March): Site names were added for desktop for the same set of languages.
- May 2023: Site names are supported on the subdomain level for the same set of languages and on mobile search results only.
Controlling site names. Google back in October 2022 explained that Google Search uses a number of ways to identify the site name for the search result. But if you want, you can use structured data on your home page to communicate to Google what the site name should be for your site. Google has specific documentation on this new Site name structured data available over here.
Why we care. If you still see issues with some of your internal pages not having the correct site name in Google Search, you may want to try to get Google to recrawl and reprocess the page. Using the Google URL Inspection tool may help trigger that process.
Otherwise, Google will update the pages over time, as it naturally reprocesses the pages.
