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Google Doesn't Rank My Site for My Own Brand Name

45 points hypeaccount | 1 comments | 10 Sep 25 18:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source

I run a small business in Canada. Oddly, if you search my brand name, my own site doesn’t show up at all on the first page. Instead, Facebook, Instagram, and random sites that link to me outrank me.

I’ve submitted my sitemap to GSC, checked indexing, and built branded backlinks—but Google still ignores my homepage. It’s bad because people looking for me are funneled into other platforms where I lose control of the user journey.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is this Google punishing small/new sites, or do I need to approach brand SEO differently? At this point it feels like Google wants me to buy ads just to show up for my own name.

1. BMFXX ◴[10 Sep 25 19:24 UTC] No.45202423[source]▶
Admittedly I had a client with this. He was on Shopify. We did everything thgat franze highlighted. We did a full screamingfrog audit of the sitemap, and fixed everything from title length down to html and script problems. Wound up being really toxic backlinks that we needed to disavow. It still took a few months but finally his links were listing. The crazy thing is we had cloned competitors getting higher ranking before.