Stop Googling Yourself

As counterintuitive as this may seem, you have to stop Googling yourself.

Sure, you’re a business owner and want to quickly check your visibility, so you do a Google search. But here’s the thing — no matter what industry you’re in, what you see is different from what your target audience is seeing. 

Regardless of industry, from eCommerce to Law to Home Services, a business owner will not see the same results as their potential customers. Search results vary among searchers. So here’s why you need to stop Googling yourself.

Google Results are Biased

You read that right. Google search results are biased. And that’s not a bad thing! Google wants to show you relevant results; results that are catered to your wants and needs. 

To do this, it takes all of the available data, including your previous searches, cookied webpages, browsing history, physical location, etc. Then it bundles all that data together and suggests the results it thinks you are looking for per its algorithm.

Oftentimes this works, and you find what you’re looking for immediately. Other times, you need to perform multiple searches to get what you need.

In the context of Googling yourself, there are only two outcomes: 

• You find yourself at the top of the rankings. Great! Everything is peachy. Except maybe you’ve searched for yourself before and scrolled through the results to find what you wanted, clicked on that result, and now Google knows what you’re looking to see. Or you might have typed in specific keywords that aren’t ambiguous, like your business name, so Google automatically knew what you wanted to see.
• Not seeing yourself in the rankings is the second outcome. Instead, you find competitors where you should be. But here’s where the bias comes in — these results are not what everyone sees. These results are tailored to you based on what Google thinks you want to see.

In other words, your search results will be different from those that your friend across town gets, even if you used the same search query. Or you could be standing next to each other on different devices and still see different Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).. This brings us to another point…

Googling Yourself Doesn’t Reveal SERP Positions

When you Google yourself, it only reveals part of the picture. In Google’s infancy, its criteria was much simpler, its algorithm wasn’t as developed, and there simply wasn’t as much content around the web. As a result, search results were pretty static for the most part.

But Google is now older than the legal drinking age in the United States, and thus has grown wiser and more complex with the passing of time. Things like Alexa didn’t exist when Google came on the scene, but now we are asking Alexa to search for “Best Baked Ziti Recipes” before the in-laws get to the house. Does Google take that into account?

You bet! Here are some factors that affect search results:

• Device (Desktop vs. Mobile vs. Tablet)
• Voice Assistant (Alexa, Google Home, etc.)
• Location
• Time of Day
• Search History
• Being logged into a Google Account
• Search Engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc.)

With all of these factors affecting the SERPs, it only makes sense that search results are varied and tailored to each user.

Googling Yourself Can Harm Your Click Through Rate (CTR)

You already know not to click on your own PPC ad and pay Google just to visit your own site. But being served your own ad still counts as an ad impression, and by not clicking it, you’re telling Google that your ad isn’t relevant. That hurts your click through rate, which impacts your quality score and can result in paying a higher cost per click. 

Organically, clicking on your own website in the organic listings inflates your visitor numbers. Clicking on a competitor’s site shows Google that you were looking for that site over your own and gives Google the signal to boost that site higher in future searches. Similarly, it signals to Google that your website isn’t relevant because you’re choosing to go to your competitors’ websites.

So, if searching for yourself doesn’t show you how well you’re doing, how can you tell? 

Key Performance Indicators

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can give you much more insight into how well your business performs in search results. If you work with a digital marketing agency, they can provide the metrics from Google Analytics to give you a direct look into how your site is performing and whether or not you’re reaching a qualified audience.

Within Analytics, you can check things like your sales, conversion rates, form submissions, total sessions, average time on site, and more! This information takes it a step further than just searching and discovering whether you’re in the top results or not. These are insightful metrics linked directly to the performance of your site.

Analytics may also show that you’re generating traffic (and maybe even converting) for keywords you never thought to search. You are the expert in your field, so while you know what you would search for as an expert, consumers who are just beginning their journey might phrase things differently. 

This also demonstrates how useful marketing tools can be. They give meaning and context to the KPIs for your site. Here are some numbers from Google to hammer this home: Google estimates that 15% of its search volume is unique searches. This means that there are 500 million searches out of the 3 billion daily searches that have never been used before. That is 500,000,000 unique searches that haven’t been thought of before. Daily.

What Does This Mean For My Business?

In short, you can’t judge your online presence based on a search you did once. 

Instead of spending time and energy Googling yourself, use Analytics and other marketing tools to measure your online presence, and let your potential customers Google your business. Otherwise, you’re doing more harm than good and failing to get the true picture of how your website is performing.. 

Get in touch with us today if you want to stop Googling yourself and get a true read on how your website is performing.