You Affect Your Search Results

As humans, we have a keen interest in tracking our performance, so it’s only natural as a business owner to want to monitor your rankings on the search engines results page (SERP). And hey, what’s the harm? As long as no one knows you are secretly stalking your Google rankings, it’s no big deal, right? Wrong! Repeatedly searching for your brand can have catastrophic effects on your page rankings.

You’re ranking may not be 100% accurate

While generally, the SERP will be the same from one user to another, search engines try to personalize results based on a user’s demographics. That means that someone who searches for the word “bank” in Atlanta will get a different result than someone who searches for the same term in Denver.

Similarly, major search engines like Google use your search history to determine what you are looking for, so that means if you are frequently searching for and clicking on your business, your company is going to show up at the top of the list every time. Searching for your brand over and over will give you a personalized search result that may mislead you to believe that your rankings are higher than they actually are.

You may be telling the search engine that your page isn’t relevant

In the same way that repeatedly visiting your page can skew your search results, searching for your brand and then not clicking on your company can affect your results as well. For example, if you run a graphic design company and search for the term “graphic design” every day, every time the search results pop up and you don’t click on your company (or worse click on a competitor), the search engine is going to determine that your company is not relevant to the search term. Each time you do this, you risk getting bumped further and further down the SERP.

It’s important to have an accurate picture of your SERP rankings so that you can take the steps to improve or maintain your results. SocialSEO has the tools to monitor the SERP without skewing the data. If you need help with your company’s SEO, we’re here to help. Contact SocialSEO for a free quote today.