When Google Forgets Who You Are – Getting Back in the Search Results
If you have a website, you may have noticed something very strange happening with your Brand name in Google. In early 2026, site owners who search for their own brand name into Google have seen their Homepage fall below other ranked pages on their website – or fail to appear at all.
Forums and SEO communities have been full of reports describing exactly this pattern and it seems to be growing in frequency. Homepages have been dropping for branded and commercial queries, with Google appearing to choose category or About Us pages – behaviour that looks less like a ranking penalty and more like a fundamental intent reassignment.
The December 2025 Core Update
In late 2025, there were rumblings of a Core Update being rolled out quietly – no official word from Google, but enough algorithm activity moving rankings to start raising some eyebrows.
The feeling across the SEO community was that Google was rolling out some smaller adjustments ahead of a larger update.
This was confirmed in December 2025 when the Core Update was announced. This caused further volatility across categories, with major platforms and even authoritative publishers seeing notable drops.
The AI Dimension
Unless you’ve been in a cave with your fingers in your ears for a year, you will know about the explosion of AI across the internet.
November also saw the launch of Gemini 3, integrated immediately into AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google’s ranking systems are now increasingly AI-driven, and the signals they prioritise are shifting.
Now, updates are becoming less about penalising websites and more about re-evaluating usefulness, with the algorithm increasingly comparing pages against each other rather than against fixed rules.
No Quick Fix
This isn’t a technical glitch and doesn’t have a quick fix to boost your Homepage back to where it was. This is a sign that your overall website Brand signals may need attention. Reviewing and understanding how Google is reading and ranking your site is the first step; after that, you need a new optimisation strategy to get things moving in the right direction.
If you are seeing that Google is not identifying your homepage as the definitive result for your own brand name, it is time to get in touch with the experts.
