Before a prospect rings you, signs a contract or accepts a job offer, they almost always type your business name into Google. What they see in the next five seconds shapes the decision more than most of your marketing: your own listing and sitelinks, a knowledge panel or Business Profile, star ratings, a stale directory profile with your old phone number, a news story from four years ago, and perhaps a competitor's ad sitting above all of it.
That page is your brand SERP, the search results page for your brand name. Most businesses never look at it deliberately. They assume it is accurate because they know their own business. Jason Barnard, who has written about brand SERPs for years, described it on the Semrush blog as your "new Business Card" and warned that owners wrongly assume their results are complete, accurate and positive (Semrush, 2018).
This guide breaks the brand results page into its parts, shows how to audit it on desktop, mobile and in AI answers, explains which elements you control and which you can only influence, and sets out a monthly routine to keep it in shape. It also covers the separate problem of founder and executive name searches.
The parts of a brand results page and who controls each one
A brand SERP is not one thing. It is a collection of elements from different systems, each with its own rules. Knowing which system produces each element tells you where to act.
| Element | Where it comes from | Your level of control | Main lever |
|---|---|---|---|
| Homepage listing (title, snippet, site name) | Your website | High | Title tag, meta description, WebSite structured data |
| Sitelinks | Google's analysis of your site's links | Indirect | Clear navigation, page titles, internal anchor text |
| Knowledge panel (entity) | Google's Knowledge Graph | Partial once claimed | Claim and suggest edits; consistent facts across the web |
| Business Profile panel (local) | Google Business Profile | High | Profile content, categories, photos, reviews |
| Review stars and review sites | Third-party platforms | Influence only | Review generation and responses |
| Social profiles | LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram | High | Complete, active profiles linked from your site |
| News and articles | Publishers | Low | PR, new coverage, corrections |
| Directories and data aggregators | Third parties | Medium | Claim and update listings |
| Ads on your brand name | Google Ads advertisers | Low to medium | Your own brand campaign; trademark complaints where valid |
| AI Overview or AI Mode answer | Google's AI features drawing on indexed pages | Indirect | Accurate, consistent information on pages Google trusts |
Barnard's useful framing is to sort every result into three groups: results you control directly, results you can partly influence, and results you cannot control. Start with the first group because it is fastest, then work outward.
Auditing your branded results on desktop, mobile and in AI answers
Google's results vary by device, location and signed-in history, so a single search on your office laptop is not an audit. Use this process once to set a baseline.
- List your brand queries. Include the plain brand name, brand plus location, brand plus "reviews", brand plus "complaints", brand plus "pricing", common misspellings and, if relevant, product names. Search Console's branded queries filter can help here: Google says it lets you "easily separate data based on whether or not the search term included your brand name", though it is not available to sites with low impressions and some queries may be misclassified (Search Console Help).
- Search in a private window on desktop and on a phone using mobile data. If you serve several cities or countries, use a VPN or a rank tracker with location settings.
- Screenshot the full first page for each query, including ads, panels and "People also ask".
- Record each result in a sheet: position, URL, owner, sentiment (positive, neutral, negative), accuracy (correct, outdated, wrong) and control level.
- Check AI answers. Note whether an AI Overview appears for brand plus "reviews" or brand plus "is it legit", and which sources it cites. Ask the same questions in the AI assistants your buyers use and record what they say.
- Check page two for brand plus "reviews". Problems often sit there and rise when page one changes.
A scoring sheet you can reuse every month
Give each first-page result a score from -2 to +2: +2 for an owned, accurate, positive asset; +1 for a positive third-party result; 0 for neutral; -1 for outdated or inaccurate; -2 for negative. A first page with ten organic results gives a range of -20 to +20. Track this number monthly. It is crude, but it makes progress visible to colleagues who will never read a screenshot deck.
Example (hypothetical): a 12-person architecture practice audits its name and finds its homepage (+2), LinkedIn (+2), a Houzz profile with old photos (-1), a Companies House style registry listing (0), a planning objection article from a local paper (-2), an inactive Facebook page last updated years ago (-1), Google reviews (+1), two directory listings with an old address (-1 each) and a former partner's personal site (0). Total: -1. Three months of fixes later, after updating the directories, refreshing Houzz and Facebook, and publishing a projects page and an Instagram profile that start ranking, the score is +9 and the news article has dropped to position 9.
Fixing the results you own: homepage listing, site name and sitelinks
Start with your own listing. It is usually first, and it is the one most fully in your hands.
- Title tag: lead with the brand, then what you do and where. "Harper & Lowe Architects | Residential Architects in Bristol" tells searchers they found the right business.
- Meta description: state what you do, for whom, and one proof point such as years trading or accreditation. Google may rewrite it, but a good one is used more often.
- Site name: Google shows a site name above the URL. You can state your preference with WebSite structured data on the homepage, with
name,urland optionallyalternateName.
“Currently, Google Search only supports one site name per site, where a site is defined by the domain or subdomain.”
— Google Search Central, Provide a site name to Google Search
Note the consequence: a subfolder such as example.com/shop cannot have its own site name. If your brands live on separate domains or microsites, each gets its own, which matters for groups with several brands. Our guide to microsites versus subfolders covers that trade-off.
Sitelinks are the indented links under your homepage result. You cannot choose them, and Google's documentation is direct about it:
“At the moment, sitelinks are automated.”
— Google Search Central, Sitelinks
Google adds that its systems "analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts". What you can do is make your important pages obvious: a clean main navigation, descriptive page titles and consistent internal anchor text. If an unwanted page such as an old careers page keeps appearing as a sitelink, the only controls Google offers are removing the page or applying noindex.
Knowledge panels and Business Profiles: claiming and correcting facts
There are two different panels that appear on the right of desktop results (and near the top on mobile), and they are managed in different ways.
The local Business Profile panel
If you have a physical location or serve customers in an area, your Google Business Profile usually dominates your brand SERP on mobile. Check that the name, address, phone, hours, categories, website link and photos are correct, and that recent reviews have replies. Our Business Profile optimisation checklist covers each field, and the local SEO service handles this for multi-location businesses.
The entity knowledge panel
Larger organisations, public figures and well-documented brands may get a knowledge panel drawn from Google's Knowledge Graph. You can claim it: search for the entity, click "Claim this knowledge panel", then sign in to one of the listed official sites or profiles such as YouTube or Search Console to verify (Google Knowledge Panel Help). Once verified, you can suggest edits, and Google asks you to "provide links to web pages that can be used to verify this information." It does not let you write the panel yourself. The practical work is making sure your facts are consistent everywhere Google looks: your About page, LinkedIn, Wikidata where appropriate, industry databases and press. Our knowledge panel guide explains the process in more detail.
Owning more of page one with profiles that deserve to rank
For most businesses, a brand query shows your site and then a mix of other platforms. The more of those positions are profiles you run, the less room there is for outdated or hostile results. The ones that tend to rank for brand names are below, but test what Google already favours for your query rather than opening accounts everywhere.
| Profile type | Typically ranks well for | Effort to maintain | Worth it if… |
|---|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn company page | B2B and professional services | Low to medium | You sell to businesses or hire regularly |
| YouTube channel | Product brands, trades, education | High | You can publish video consistently |
| Facebook page | Local and consumer businesses | Low | Customers already message you there |
| Visual, consumer and hospitality brands | Medium | Your work photographs well | |
| Industry directories (Houzz, Clutch, Trustpilot and similar) | Brand plus "reviews" | Low once set up | Buyers in your sector check them |
| Crunchbase, Wikidata | Entity understanding for panels | Low | You want a knowledge panel and meet notability norms |
A profile only helps if it is complete, linked from your website and occasionally active. An abandoned Twitter account with a last post from 2019 is worse than none, because it ranks and tells people the business may have stopped trading.
Beyond profiles, owned content can take brand positions too: a careers site, a help centre, a podcast page or a well-linked research report. Each needs a distinct purpose. Spinning up thin pages purely to fill page one does not work and wastes time.
Pushing down negative or outdated results without crossing ethical lines
Some results you cannot remove. A fair news story or a genuine negative review is not something Google will take down because you dislike it. What you can do depends on the type of result:
- Outdated information on a site you can contact: ask the owner to update it. Directories and local papers often correct old addresses or names when asked politely.
- Personal contact details: Google's "Results about you" tool lets people request removal of results showing their phone number, home address or email address (Google Search Help). This is for individuals, which makes it useful for founders.
- Copied or impersonating pages: where someone has republished your content or set up a lookalike, a copyright or trademark route may apply. See our guide to dealing with copied content and DMCA takedowns.
- Negative reviews: reply calmly and specifically, fix the issue where you can, and build a steady flow of new reviews from happy customers. Our guide to responding to negative reviews has templates.
- Legitimate but unwelcome articles: the only ethical approach is to publish and earn better results that outrank them: new coverage, owned content and stronger profiles.
Avoid services that promise to delete results, post fake reviews or flood the web with spun articles. They frequently break platform rules, can create new negative stories and, in the case of fake reviews, may breach consumer protection law in many countries. Our online reputation management service works only with legitimate methods.
Brand SERPs for founders, partners and executives
In small and mid-sized businesses, people search the founder's name almost as often as the company's, particularly in professional services, investment and recruitment. A personal name SERP is harder to manage because common names are shared with other people, and old personal content surfaces easily.
- Create or refresh a bio page on the company site at a clean URL such as
/team/jane-doe/, with a photo, role, credentials and links to their profiles. - Complete their LinkedIn profile and make sure the headline includes their current role and company.
- Collect speaking pages, podcast appearances and bylined articles, and link to them from the bio page so Google connects them.
- Check "Results about you" for personal details and request removal where eligible.
- If the person shares a name with someone notorious, use a consistent middle initial or a "name plus company" format in bylines so their content clusters together.
Monitoring brand SERP changes month to month
Brand SERPs drift. Directories change, a journalist writes something, a competitor starts bidding on your name, or Google adds an AI Overview to brand plus "reviews". A light monthly routine catches problems early.
| Task | Frequency | Tool |
|---|---|---|
| Screenshot and score page one for your main brand queries | Monthly | Private browser or rank tracker with SERP snapshots |
| Check branded clicks and impressions | Monthly | Search Console branded filter |
| Review new reviews and reply | Weekly | Business Profile, review platforms |
| Check for ads on your brand name | Monthly | Manual search; Google Ads auction insights if you bid |
| Look for new news mentions | Ongoing | Google Alerts or a media monitoring tool |
| Ask AI assistants about your brand | Quarterly | The assistants your buyers use |
If competitors are bidding on your name, our guide to competitors bidding on your brand explains your options. And if one of your top non-brand pages is under pressure at the same time, the approach in defending a number one ranking applies too.
Questions owners ask about their brand search results
Can I pay Google to remove a negative result?
No. Google removes results only under its policies, such as legal requests or certain personal information. Paid ads do not affect organic results.
Why does my old company name still appear?
Third-party sites still use it. Update directories and profiles, ask publishers to add a note, and make sure your own site mentions the former name once so Google connects the two.
How long does it take to change a brand SERP?
Owned elements like titles can change within days of a recrawl. Pushing a third-party result off page one usually takes several months of building better results.
Do I need a Wikipedia page to get a knowledge panel?
Not necessarily. Panels draw on many sources. Wikipedia has strict notability rules, and creating a page about your own company breaks its conflict of interest guidance.
Should I bid on my own brand name?
It is worth testing if competitors bid on it or if you want control over the message at the top of the page. Measure incremental clicks before committing a large budget.
Where to start with your brand SERP this week
Run the six-step audit for your plain brand name and brand plus "reviews". Score page one. Then fix the three easiest items in your control: your homepage title and description, your Business Profile, and any directory showing old details. Set a monthly reminder to repeat the score.
If the audit turns up problems you cannot fix alone, such as damaging articles, fake listings or a messy knowledge panel, our team can help. Get a quote for a brand SERP audit and clean-up plan, or request a custom quote for ongoing monitoring. If brand traffic looks healthy and you want more non-brand growth, start with the striking distance keywords already close to page one.
Further reading on brand SERP
- How to Defend a #1 Ranking When Competitors Close In
- Finding SERP Weak Spots: Where Small Sites Can Outrank Big Brands
- Baidu, Naver, Yandex and Seznam: SEO for Search Engines That Beat Google Locally
Sources for this brand SERP guide
- Semrush: Brand SERPs You Really Should Be Tracking (and Improving)
- Google Search Central: Sitelinks
- Google Search Central: Site names in Google Search
- Google Help: Get verified on Google and update your knowledge panel
- Google Search Help: Results about you
- Search Console Help: Branded queries filter
