When four friends decide to open a new Thai restaurant in Manhattan, the first priority—and the subject of debate—is what to call it. The brainstorming continued intermittently until the four found themselves in a car and someone blurted out, “There’s Thai food near me.”
“There was a big pause and the name just stuck – and we immediately said, this is it,” Robert Sampson, one of the four owners, told wealth.
“It’s a very simple name, but it’s exactly what I searched for on Google,” he said. “We are Thai food and to our target audience we are ‘near me’.”
To Sampson and his partners, the name was good marketing. Sampson said the restaurant has had a steady stream of customers since it opened in April, many of whom found it online, and the name is a “conversation starter” for most people.
According to the tech publication, it’s also “a powerful symbol of Google’s profound impact on business over the past two decades.” edge, which published an in-depth study of businesses that added “near me” to their names. The thinking is that if “near me” is part of a business name, it will rank higher in web search results when someone is looking for “(service) near me.”
The number of names “near me” surges
The company’s co-founder, Steve Manning, said the first use of “near me” in a commercial brand name was less than a decade ago. iger naming agency. A “Locksmith Near Me” in Mesa, Arizona was registered in November 2016.
But the popularity of the “near me” phenomenon has exploded in recent years: “There have been as many “NEAR ME” trademark applications filed in the past six months as there were in the previous seven years, so it seems to be accelerating. ” Manning wrote.
The data is incomplete: Manning noted that most local businesses have not filed for trademarks. But it does illustrate the powerful influence Google, in the midst of an antitrust trial, has on people’s lives.
It was briefly popular before “Thai Food Nearby” opened in April a photo locals tweeted. After some very online brands expressed their approval on Twitter (which Google Maps called “very relevant”), users shared photos of other very online business names: Dentist near me in Philadelphia; a sushi restaurant in Southern California, and an “auto repair shop near me” (location to be determined). Then there are restaurant names that are SEO friendly but not location-based, like “Best Greek Chicken and Food.”
Other examples cited Mia SatoA reporter for The Verge wrote: “There’s an antique store two hours away from New York City; seven Plumber Near Me businesses; a phone repair shop near me on Cape Cod, Massachusetts; and a psychic in Chicago. By My Side; and over 20 iterations of Notary By My Side. ”
What is certain is that the way people communicate is constantly changing with the development of technology. The dot-com bubble of the late 1990s led many companies to add “dot-com” to their names to appear more modern. Google’s dominance as search engine shifts to “Google searchIn the past decade, “” has become a verb.
In the pre-Internet era, when most businesses advertised through the alphabetical Yellow Pages, directories contained a plethora of useful and forgettable names.
“You’ll see businesses named AAA Plumbing, AAAA Plumbing and AAAAA Plumbing appearing together at the top of the alphabetical directory,” Manning said.
“Because most of our decisions are emotional, consumers don’t connect with generic brands,” he said. “Ultimately, universal naming is a losing strategy.”
It also leaves brick-and-mortar businesses vulnerable to algorithms that are easily changed. Manning noted that Google could easily change its algorithm to penalize businesses with “near me” in their names. As of now, “Thai Food Near Me” on the east side of Manhattan only shows up in search results, visible only to people who are fairly close to it—searches from Brooklyn or Queens bypass it.
But even that would be enough to gain an advantage, Sampson said. Generally speaking, “most people don’t walk very far to buy food,” and Manhattan’s density works to their advantage.
“If you even reach people within a mile of you, you’re talking about a million people out there.”
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