Why You Shouldn’t Google Your Business Name (With Tips)

It feels rather enticing to do a quick search for your business’s name just to see what comes up and how you compare to competitors. Is your website the first organic link? Are you in the number one spot for paid ads? Is your business dominating the map pack? What keywords are you ranking for?

At Creekmore Marketing, we understand your curiosity about how your business is doing, especially in the age of search engine optimization (SEO) and AI. We’ve been there. However, there are some compelling reasons why this approach may not be the best route.

Though it may seem harmless, searching for your company online can actually do the opposite of what you intended.

Google is its own unique entity. With constantly changing algorithms and biased data rooted in individual search history, search engine result pages (SERPs) are bound to vary from person to person. So, what you see when you search for one keyword may not be the same for someone else also looking up that term.

Here’s what can also happen when you take to the SERPs:

While you’re just checking in on your website to see how you’re performing on the front end, you’re really giving Google different, often negative, signals that can show up in your data.

For example, if you see your website on the SERPs, but you don’t click on it, you just let Google know your website is irrelevant to what you searched. And that’s the last thing you want to do.

However, if you do click on your website only to close it out immediately, this can increase your bounce rate. A bounce rate is the percentage of users who click onto your website but leave without interacting with it. This percentage may then indicate to Google that your website failed to match what you searched for.

Then there’s your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to think about. Clicking on your own PPC ads ultimately costs you money to visit your own website, skewing your overall data.

On the other hand, if you see your PPC ad but don’t click it, there are consequences as well. Without clicking on the ad, you’re lowering your click-through-rate (CTR), telling Google to lower your ad rank and thereby showing your ad less frequently to potential leads.

Additionally, getting impressions on your ads without clicks may cause Google to prioritize other companies, including your local competitors, in the next PPC auction, where your real-time bid for where your ads appear on Google, where they rank, and how much you pay, causing you to miss out on opportunities.

One keyword search on Google certainly won’t give you the full picture of your marketing performance, especially as voice and AI search become increasingly prevalent.

For instance, you might be excelling in AI search, but not performing the same in organic search. Making assumptions about your metrics based on what you see in the SERPs may lead you to alter your marketing plan, which could be detrimental to your campaign if you don’t understand the full scope of your marketing data.

What Are Better Ways To Review My Marketing Data?

Since conducting a search for your business name isn’t the best way to understand your marketing analytics, here’s what you can do instead:

It’s best to establish a plan or set key performance indicators (KPIs) to provide clear benchmarks for reference and to understand what may need improvement, rather than relying on personal search results.

Here are some considerations when curating an effective marketing plan:

• What is your overall company goal? Be specific yet realistic.
• Who is your target audience? Can you tailor your approach based on segmenting your customers?
• How can you optimize your budget for the best return on investment (ROI) for PPC ads?
• How will you identify what’s working and what could use improvement?

Overall, the most effective long-term marketing plan you can make is to be consistent and create useful, relevant content that appeals to users and is easy for Google and AI crawlers to index.

Once you have a marketing plan, you’ll want to find reliable tools to make it easier to monitor your digital marketing analytics, as well as get some valuable insights into your competitors.

This step may take some time and research to determine which is the right software and interface for you and your company’s needs, but Google Analytics and Google Search Console are two free tools to help you get started.

With endless tools and analytics to keep track of, simplicity really is the name of the game.

When you partner with a digital marketing company, like Creekmore Marketing, you gain access to multiple forms of data about your company, including organic traffic, paid traffic, and social media performance, in one easy locationa.

Our goal with the CreekSmart Marketing Dashboard is to make it easy on you. We know you have more critical tasks that need your attention, so something that gives you a quick, easy-to-read snapshot of your overall performance is essential.

With our marketing dashboard, you have 24/7 access to essential information like:

• Website leads.
• Google Business Profile (GBP) insights.
• PPC campaign performance.
• Social media analytics.

Get Reliable Analytics With Our Marketing Dashboard at Creekmore Marketing

Don’t rely on the guesswork that comes with doing a business name search for your company to tell you how you’re performing. Work with a team of dedicated professionals who are obsessed with getting you the results you deserve with actionable insights backed by real analytics from your website, paid ad campaign, and social media presence.

Book your free digital marketing consultation online or call (859) 309-5987 to learn more about how our experts can help with your marketing data and more.

Creekmore Marketing is headquartered near Lexington, KY, but we serve many industries and businesses throughout the United States and Canada.