Why Is It Important to Eliminate Ambiguity In Terms of Brand SERPs?

Why Is It Important to Eliminate Ambiguity In Terms of Brand SERPs?

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Ambiguity is always a problem for search engines and for humans. In the context of optimising a Brand SERP that is doubly true. In this clip, Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) explains why having multiple entities with the same name is a massive problem. He gives the example of his own podcast since, by naming his podcast after himself, he has made it difficult for Google to identify and understand each as a distinct entity. He also gives a delightful (and complex) example of the ambiguity of the name “Boowa and Kwala”.

00:00 Podcast is not the same entity as the person
00:41 Google cannot distinguish your podcast and company
01:44 Multiple entities with the same string of characters creates ambiguity

Transcript from: Why Is It Important to Eliminate Ambiguity In Terms of Brand SERPs?

And it gets your Brand SERP beautiful and shiny. Can I just answer the two questions that I’ve just heard and then I’ll let Dave answer the quick wins on the Brand SERP.

Number one is the podcast didn’t play any role in that beautiful Brand SERP at all. I built it without the podcast. The podcast came later on. The podcast is an addition, and that also brings to mind the fact that the podcast is not the same entity as me.So I’ve called it “With Jason Barnardā€¦” and that was a test to see how well I could control it because there’s immense ambiguity between “With Jason Barnardā€¦” And with “Jason Barnard“, the entity.

And so the idea of naming your podcast after your company or after yourself creates ambiguity that’s going to hit you in the face further down the line because Google’s not going to be able to distinguish between “Jason Barnard” the podcast and “Jason Barnard”, the person. I’ve made that mistake so many times, I’ll give you an example, Boowa and Kwala, the blue Dog and yellow Koala. And if you haven’t heard of them before, please do watch any of my shows. I always talk about them. Boowa and Kwala. It’s two different characters. It’s a TV show. It’s a website. It’s a song. It’s actually multiple versions of that song on multiple albums. And that becomes an immense problem because Google doesn’t know whether I’m talking about the fictional universe, the characters themselves, the TV series, the web series, the song, the other song, the actual fact that somebody had written that song, the existence of that song, and that’s seven different entities and I’m not even trying.

That was really stupid. It was back in 1998. So the problem didn’t exist. So I can excuse myself from that stupidity, but naming multiple entities with the same exact string of characters is phenomenally difficult to deal with further down the line. And I would advise not to go for that particular quick win. If you’ve got a long-term strategy. Dave quick wins for the Brand SERP. Sorry. There’sā€¦

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