By now we’re all aware that we’re being tracked online. But as a website owner, you may not realize that your searches on Google are different from those of your potential customers. The results from searcher to searcher depend on a whole mess of factors like topics you’ve searched in the past, how frequently you’ve visited each site, where you are geographically and much more.
Because of your online habits, Google knows you’re familiar with your own website, so they send you other websites that have the similar products. These are likely your competitor websites, which may give you the impression that their sites are ranking better in public searches.
The best way to check how well your site is doing its job is to look at your visitor statistics or analytics. Usually this is installed by your web developer and they can give you access to the visitor information. There’s a lot of information collected in Analytics that’s really handy for improving the effectiveness of your website.
Can’t resist searching for your business?
OK. Fair enough. If you can’t resist searching for your own website then look for the Incognito or InPrivate feature in your web browser. This should give you a better idea of what your customer sees. Although it’s not foolproof.
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