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Key Takeaways Your online presence is your first impression, so to make sure it’s a good one, you have to know what your company looks like from a customer perspective.
Read the reviews about your business, search your name in the news, line up your listings in any directory you’re listed in and polish your Google Business Profile to make sure you look the best you can to current and potential customers.
Picture this. A future customer hears your name at a dinner party. Intrigued, they reach for their phone before dessert even arrives. In those quiet seconds, before they ever call you or step through your door, they form an opinion. And that opinion is built entirely from what the internet decides to show them.
Here is the thing most business owners miss: Your online presence is your first impression. It is the velvet rope, the front window, the handshake. So let me walk you through exactly how to see yourself the way the world does. This is the first half of my client assessment at Fix Your Search, and it starts long before I ever meet you in person.
1. Read your AI search overview first
Start here, because this is where your customers start. Type your business name into Google and study the AI-generated summary that appears at the very top. This little snapshot pulls from all over the web to describe you in a few tidy sentences. Read it slowly. Is it accurate? Is it flattering? Is it even you?
When I run this check for a client, I am hunting for inconsistent info. Old addresses. Old services. Occasionally a detail borrowed from a competitor who happens to share a similar name. Most people skim that overview and move on without a second click, so if it gets your name wrong, you’re out. My first job is always to feed those results better, giving true and real information about who you are.
2. Search your own name in the news
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