Should you Google your business to check its ranking?

It is commonplace for business owners and marketers to indulge in basic digital curiosity by searching for their personal or business name on search engines like Google to determine their online rankings. This practice extends to exploring high-value keywords to gauge their performance compared to competitors in online searches, thus forming the foundation for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

While such searches are helpful in evaluating your business’s performance and market position, they can have adverse effects on your rankings if not approached the way your customers do. Engaging in such searches without due diligence may negatively impact your search marketing efforts.

Google places great importance on understanding user intent, utilizing the vast amount of data collected from user searches to provide the most relevant search results through its algorithms and machine learning programs.

However, Google’s automated processes do not have the ability to consider the nuances of individuals searching for competitive analysis. From Google’s perspective, high-level keywords are utilized by users to find businesses that fulfill their requirements, not for business owners and marketers to investigate their competition.

The disparity between your intention when searching for yourself and how Google interprets that intention can distort the search results, harming your SEO efforts and providing a boost to your competition. In other words, engaging in poor search habits when investigating yourself can have a detrimental impact on various aspects of your SEO.