Site Name
A site name is the name Google shows in search results to say which website a page comes from, separate from the page's own title. Google picks it automatically from your home page and from references to your site across the web, and it generally tries to use the name you set in WebSite structured data.
Source: Google Search Central, Site names in Google Search, checked October 29, 2026
What Site Name means for your business
Google's guide asks for a unique, concise name that people already know you by, used the same way across your home page. It warns that a generic, keyword-style name is unlikely to be picked unless it's a very well-known brand.
So we'd make the name in your structured data match the one in your page title and your main heading. If people know you by a shorter name or your initials, Google lets you add that as an alternate name.
We'd add the markup only on the home page, since Google takes one site name per domain or subdomain from there. Google says "it can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks after publishing a page for Google to find and crawl it." If the wrong name keeps showing, Google suggests checking the markup for errors and asking it to crawl the home page again.
If Google keeps showing an old name for your site, and your profiles elsewhere still use it too, getting one name used everywhere is part of the same work.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview cited an agency blog, Search Engine Journal, Stack Overflow and a training site rather than Google's own guide. ChatGPT gave a short answer and linked only the example sites it named.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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