Most owners have never searched for their own business the way a customer does. They type the business name, see themselves at the top, and feel fine. But nobody who needs a plumber on a Sunday types your name. They type plumber and the town, or emergency plumber near me, and they take what comes.
So this Monday, do that. Here is how to do it properly, and what you will find.
How to mystery-shop yourself
- Use your phone, not the laptop. Ofcom's Online Nation report for 2025 puts smartphones at over three quarters of UK adults' time online, and the person who needs you is holding one.
- Open a private window, so your own history is not shaping what you see. Results still change with where you are standing.
- Search the way a stranger would: the trade and the town. Then the trade and "near me". Then one specific job: "boiler service" and the town, "dog groomer" and the town.
- Do not scroll past the first screen yet. Look at what is on it.
What the first page is made of
For a local trade the first screen is usually a mix of the same four things.
- The map, usually with three businesses. Google says local results are ranked mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and that nobody can pay for a better local rank. Prominence means how well known you are online: reviews, ratings and links from other sites.
- One or two directories. Checkatrade, Yell, Bark, that sort of thing. They are big sites with a page for every town. They are not your competitors, but they are between you and the customer.
- A couple of real businesses with their own websites. Usually the ones with a page about exactly the thing that was searched for.
- The rest. Facebook pages, old listings, a council page, a forum thread from 2019.
Now find yourself. Are you in the map? Are you below the directories? Are you on the page at all?
What to write down
Three things, and be honest.
- Where you appear, if at all, for each of the four searches.
- What the businesses above you have that you don't. Count their reviews. Open their site. See if it has a page for the job you searched.
- What a customer sees when they tap you. A tappable phone number, prices, hours, and a way to book, or a Facebook page that says "message us".
That is the whole mystery shop. It takes ten minutes, and it tells you more than any report.
What usually wins
I will not tell you how to get to the top, because nobody controls Google's rankings, and anyone who promises page one is guessing with your money. But the pattern I see on first pages is not a mystery. The businesses in the map have claimed their free Google Business Profile and have reviews, which is what Google means by prominence. The businesses in the results underneath tend to have a website with a page about the job that was searched for, written in the words customers type.
Both of those are things you can do, and neither costs thousands. Google's own guidance on how it ranks local results is here, in plain English. Next Monday we do this for a real trade in a real town, with the names left off.
Dale, Pagefive