Local UK dealer Paperstone has been experiencing a significant drop-off in traffic to its website after Google began autocorrecting its brand name to ‘Pepperstone’, the name of a financial services company based in Australia. For a business that has operated successfully online for more than two decades, the development has been both unexpected and unsettling. What initially appeared to be an isolated error quickly escalated into a measurable decline in branded search traffic.
According to CEO and founder Jim Brown, the first warning signs came through anecdotal comments from customers and colleagues. “Someone in the sales team mentioned it, and at first you assume people have just mistyped something,” he says. “But then customers began saying they were getting results for Pepperstone instead of us. As soon as we checked the brand traffic, you could see a sharp decline.”
Misinterpreted intent
That decline has since proved substantial. Paperstone estimates Google brand traffic was down by around 40% at one stage, with customers resorting to workarounds – for example, adding words such as ‘office’, ‘supplies’ or ‘UK’ to locate the business. Even accounting for a rebound, overall branded traffic remains about 20% lower than before the issue emerged, which Brown describes as “very concerning”.
At the centre of the problem is how Google now interprets the query ‘Paperstone’. Rather than displaying results for the dealer, Google increasingly assumes the user intended to search for Pepperstone, a forex/financial services brand. The algorithm delivers results for the Australian firm by default, while offering a small “search instead for Paperstone” link that many users may miss.
Brown finds the situation baffling. “I get it if you’ve misspelled a word and Google corrects it, but we have a brand name that’s been around for 21 years, spend thousands of pounds a month on Google and generate strong traffic in the UK. Why is Google treating it as a typo now? It feels like they’ve taken us off the high street and stuck us down a back alley.”
The underlying behaviour aligns with how Google’s modern search models operate. Rather than relying solely on character matching, the system uses semantic analysis to infer intent. If two terms look similar and one has far higher authority, traffic and backlink strength, Google may conclude that they are interchangeable or that one is a misspelling of the other.
In Paperstone’s case, the algorithm appears to be consistently betting on Pepperstone. SEO specialists say this is more likely to affect brands with names that resemble more prominent global entities.
While Paperstone has strong recognition in the UK office supplies sector, Pepperstone’s international reach and heavier web footprint may be outweighing those signals. It also reflects the increasing use of machine learning models to cluster queries, predict intent and ‘correct’ perceived user mistakes.
Knock-on effects
The commercial impact goes beyond search visibility. Some customers assumed the worst when they could not find Paperstone online. “We’ve had people tell us they wondered if we’d gone,” reveals Brown. “Most loyal clients eventually work out what’s gone wrong, but new prospects are far more likely to fall through the cracks.”
At the same time, Google has not been contactable, let alone able to provide a remedy. A possible solution may be for Paperstone to bid on its own brand name, but this offers little benefit if Google autocorrects users away from that term in the first place.
Bidding on ‘Pepperstone’ was considered but was dismissed because clicks in the financial services category are extremely expensive, with a low likelihood of conversion and a high risk of attracting irrelevant traffic. “It becomes uneconomical very quickly,” Brown adds. “You end up paying for people looking for a forex service, not office supplies.”
To tackle the issue, Paperstone has shifted its SEO focus. Historically, the company prioritised product-related search terms – office supplies, workplace products and stationery – rather than its own name. Brown now believes the business should have been more proactive in reinforcing its brand identity online.
“We’re very English about these things,” he admits. “We talk about our service, our products and our customers, but we’ve never been especially self-promotional. In hindsight, we should have talked more about Paperstone.”
The reseller has since added more brand-led content, increased internal mentions of its name and enhanced its site footer. It is also undertaking additional SEO outreach and contacting industry and technology media to generate more awareness of the issue. In addition, it has contacted other firms experiencing similar problems, including an American company that sells countertop materials under the Paperstone name.
Customer communication has been another tool. Paperstone emailed its customer base to explain the situation and asked users who encounter Pepperstone results to click “search instead for Paperstone” so Google receives consistent feedback on intent.
This is preferable to customers using additional search terms, something that creates its own difficulty: it diverts traffic away from the exact brand term Google needs to see reinforced.
“That works against us,” Brown affirms. “We actually want people typing ‘Paperstone’ and clicking the corrected link. But as people adapt their search behaviour to avoid the problem, that signal gets weaker.”
While Paperstone’s situation is unusual, it is not unique. SEO forums include examples of smaller firms whose names are being autocorrected to unrelated brands, sometimes leading to similar visibility issues. There is limited public data, however, because most such impacts go unreported and few businesses disclose detailed analytics regarding the situation.
What is clear is that search is becoming more volatile. As AI and entity-based ranking models continue to evolve, brand signals are increasingly shaped by external references: industry press, authoritative backlinks, directory listings and third-party profiles. SEO specialists note that search engines – and emerging AI assistants – place more weight on independent citations than on what a company says about itself.
For online dealers and workplace supplies resellers, the implications are significant. A brand can operate effectively for years yet still find itself overridden in search results if its name is considered ambiguous or too similar to a better-known entity.
Still waiting
Brown remains hopeful that a future Google update will reverse the behaviour, but there is no indication of when – or whether – this will happen. In the meantime, Paperstone is focusing on what it can control: strengthening its brand presence, diversifying traffic sources and raising awareness across the industry.
“We don’t yet know what the outcome will be, but it’s definitely sharpened our focus on brand, visibility and making sure we’re not squeezed by big tech,” he states.
