June 25, 2021

When Graco recalled one of its baby products, it reverberated online and no doubt created a huge headache for Graco, Inc., the industrial spray manufacturing company. Graco Industrial did not have a product recall, but the other Graco, Graco Baby, did issue a recall for its Little Lounger Rocking Seats in 2020.

Two very different leading companies with identical names, one a company best known for industrial sprayers, graco.com, and the other best known for its baby strollers, car seats, and cribs, gracobaby.com, can still easily be intertwined by mistake. What’s more, someone searching on Google for a new bassinet may be presented with baby-harmful products such as liquid silicone rubber, piston transfer pumps, and, of course, a high-pressure paint sprayer.

Owning and controlling your Google search results is perhaps the most important goal of any corporate communicator or digital strategy team.

Google Search is the Gateway to Every Business and Brand

  • Every day, searchers turn to Google more than 3.5 billion times.
  • On average 60% of website traffic originates from Google Search – that’s 300% more traffic to company websites and landing pages than driven by social media!
  • 36% of clicks on a Google results page occur on the top three organic links.

These statistics conclude that professional communicators must control their search results to control their name space and narrative.

Obviously, when your business or brand shares its name with a different business or brand, keeping them separate online is a herculean task. And if your other namesake has bad news, like a recall, that could create lingering doubts about your product. You don’t want an industrial engineer, architect, or do-it-yourselfer homeowners to say, “Did you hear about the Graco recall?”

Likewise, Graco Baby doesn’t want potential customers who may want a sturdy stroller finding industrial spray-paint canisters in their search.

So what should companies like Graco, with a URL of gracobaby.com and Graco Inc., which has the graco.com URL do to better protect, project, and insulate themselves?

Sometimes it Pays to Advertise: SEM vs SEO

Anyone who searches “Graco” without any qualifiers will see both companies. As of this writing, the baby products company wins as it follows the modified old adage, if at first you don’t succeed, advertise!

Admittedly, very few potential customers will mistake a car seat for industrial sprayers, but you only have a few seconds to capture attention when people are online searching. More than half of all searches actually result in no-click – an occurrence known as the “No-click phenomenon” where searches are quickly abandoned, often when a user can’t find what they want or are turned off by what they see.

graco recall 2020 related searches

Increasingly, professional communicators, digital strategists and PR pros are learning that advertising is not just for selling products anymore. Google Ads are inserted at the top of search results, claiming high-priority digital real-estate and pushing content at the bottom of page one to page two where it’s 92% less likely to be seen. Sometimes commanding top billing for a company, politician, brand or organization is as easy as a well-written ad that might be quite inexpensive on a cost-per-click basis.

Should My Clients Optimize or Advertise? Find Out with Lightbox Search

Lightbox Search helps corporate communicators better understand the strengths and weaknesses of search results for their brand and any they compete for. Running a search on our platform is as easy as running a Google search, but only Lightbox  Search will reveal and explain what ranking factors determine the visibility and performance of your content.

And because it sometimes pays to advertise too, Lightbox Search also makes it easy to plan a Google Ads campaign without any extra steps – just a search.

Written By

Jim Gold

Project Director
With his combination of multimedia skills, solid judgment and global communications experience, Jim ensures Lightbox Search engages with all of its audiences and delivers consistent client service excellence.