Website name, alternate website name, and alternate organization name

In October 2022, Google announced support for site names in mobile search results, to make it easier to identify the website that is associated with a result. In March 2023, the design for desktop results was updated as well. By adding the correct structured data, you can help Google to display the correct site name in the SERPs.

Sites running Yoast SEO are already compatible with Google’s updated design. Yoast SEO automatically adds Schema.org structured data for your site so that search engines can understand your content. Yoast SEO describes the website and automatically applies its name to the graph. This makes sure it’s eligible to show up in search results like this:

In this article, we’ll explain how you can control the name that will be shown in the search results for your WordPress or Shopify site.

Website name

WordPress

By default, Yoast SEO will use the name of your WordPress site, as indicated in Settings > General. However, you can change this value in the Yoast SEO settings. Let’s take a look at how you can do that.

Shopify

In Shopify, Yoast SEO will use the name of your Shopify site as indicated in Settings > Store details > Basic information. For Shopify, you can also change this value in the Yoast SEO settings by going to Yoast SEO > Settings > Site representation.

Alternate website name

In addition to controlling the site name, you can also control the output for the alternateName structured data by filling in the “Alternate website name” field. Like name, this is a property of the WebSite structured data. Here, you can enter a (potentially shorter) alternate name for your website. This is possible for both WordPress and Shopify sites running Yoast SEO.

Providing both a website name and an alternate website name means you’re painting a more complete picture of your business. Google might show either your website name or your alternate website name in the search results, depending on the query and the length of your site’s name.

Organization name & alternate organization name

In the Yoast SEO settings (WordPress: Settings > Site representation, Shopify: Schema > Site representation), you can indicate whether your site represents an organization or a person. If your site represents an organization, you’ll also get the option to fill in the organization name and an alternate organization name. With these input fields, you can control the output for the Organization Schema.org structured data. This helps search engines understand which organization your site is representing.

For example, for Yoast, we want the company to be found for both “Yoast BV” (“BV” standing for “private limited company” in the Netherlands) and the shorter “Yoast”. We want search engines to understand that these names refer to the same company.

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