I encountered a client who often searches for his name to see how well his site is ranking. He even clicks on the results and visits his own site. He may not know that this behavior is detrimental to his ranking on two accounts. His bounce rate is high, because after he visits his site’s page he goes back right away, which is the definition of bouncing in the area of analytics. The higher a site’s bounce rate is the more likely that Google will think that it is a low quality website.
If he wouldn’t click on the link at Google leading to his site that would still be bad on the long term for his ranking. What does it tell to Google if his site has a lot of impressions i.e. the it often shows up in Google searches, AND the most of the time people don’t click on his links? It tells, the same thing: this site is not something people would want to visit, hence Google may rank it lower and lower.
Searching for one’s own name is referred to as “egosurfing“. I wonder what proportions of people do it on a regular basis? I think, in this case, it became a kind of an obsession. For any kind of addiction there seems to be an “… Anonymous” group, but I didn’t find one for this newfangled one anywhere. Thus I recommend the formation of an “Egosurfers Anonymous” organization for people who keep searching for their names. I wonder though how its meetings would go, how the members would be able to handle to remain anonymous. That is part of their problem. Or should I say “ours”? I admit to egosurfing about once a month.
