Are you Googling yourself – not by company name – but by the keywords you want to be found for? Many companies do this to see how well they show up in the organic search results. Their hope is to see what their prospects are finding when Googling their services.
Of course, if someone Google’s your company by name, you’ll definitely show up on page 1. (If not, your website has other serious issues!)
But what if your prospects don’t know you by name, and search for what it is you do? Consider the fact that more people probably don’t know you (or us) than do. (This is where keyword research comes in.)
Googling your keywords to see where you rank is helpful.
If you’re not always showing up well, you have some serious SEO work to do. This is assuming you show up at all for your keywords.
However, when you understand what happens behind-the-scenes it’ll give you a better perspective on why the results change often, and what you can do to make sure your site shows up well.
The search volatility factor.
Search results can change over the course of a day because:
- Your competitors’ SEO efforts. (If they’re doing more, or have been doing it longer than you, they’ll show up higher.)
- Your – and your competitors – domain authority number.
- Google’s crawling schedule (with over 1 billions websites, it’s understandable why Google’s crawling can be erratic)
- New content being indexed. (You can request Google crawl your website whenever you update it.), and
- Any of Google’s 200 ranking factors
Depending on when Google crawls your website (among those billion of other sites), and the day and time you search, you could see a difference in the results.
Google also personalizes its results.
When you search your keywords, Google personalizes its results according to multiple factors, including your previous search history. As you’re most likely aware, it’s Google’s world, and we’re just living in it. They know pretty much everything about you.
To find out the different factors that affect how you show up in Google, check out the Google Search Help Support article here.
What you see when you Google yourself, isn’t the results others see.
Since everyone as a different search history, Google’s algorithms serve up slightly different results to each person.
How your previous search history reflects your search results.
Because you’ve likely been on your website a lot, your web browser is smart enough to know that. So when you’re Googling your keywords, your web browser knows you like your site. Because of that it will artificially show your listing higher in your search results.
When someone who hasn’t been to your website, searches your keywords (like your prospects), you’re up against every other company that uses the same keywords. The chances they’ll find you depends on:
- If you’re using the right keywords
- How competitive those keywords are. (It’s easier to rank for “long-tail keywords.”)
- How often – and how well – you’re blogging using keywords and on-page SEO. (See our video about on-page SEO here), and
- Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) efforts. (See what goes into an SEO/SEM plan here.)
How to work around your search history.
To see what others who haven’t been to your website are seeing, you can either:
- Clear your cookies and cache (which differs depending on which browser you use),
- Use Duck Duck Go, which by default, doesn’t track your location or search history, or
- Use Google Chrome’s Incognito window. See how to do that below.
When using Incognito, your browsing history, cookies, and other information aren’t saved on your browser. So your searching activity doesn’t show up, or is reflected in, your browser’s history.
That way, anyone using your device will never know you’ve searched for “Abba Tribute Band tickets.” or anything else you might be embarrassed about. In turn, the browser won’t know you’ve been to your company website before… just like your prospects.
The location from where you search also matters:
If you’ve ever searched for “restaurants near me,” you know Google and other search engines know where you’re searching from. Your personal location and browser settings are different than the location set in your Position Tracking campaign.
Even if you try your search in Incognito Mode, check your location, because it might not serve the same unbiased results as Position Tracking.
Your location.
If you scroll all the way to the bottom of your Google results page, you can see the location that Google is using to serve your results.
In Position Tracking, you can check the location of your campaign at the top of the page.
If the location in your Position Tracking and personal device are not exactly the same, then you could easily see different results.
Bottom line is: showing up well in Google’s search results is complicated.
One of the best ways to show up well consistently is to blog regularly using the right keywords, and set up a good SEO/SEM plan. Do that, and your website should show up well on a regular basis.