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Picture a shop that counts its customers by the guest book at the front desk, in a building where half the traffic comes through the side door. The count is not made up. It is a real number, collected honestly, and it is wrong by a consistent amount in one direction. Once you know that, the guest book is still useful. You just stop treating it as the total.
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That is what has happened to the analytics on your firm's website, and to the buttons on your Google listing. Below: what a private window does, why your own searches are poor evidence, which four numbers go quiet in family law, and what to read instead.
Why the searching looks like this
Someone looking for a divorce attorney has reasons to search carefully that a plumber's customer does not.
The device might be shared. A shared Google account is a bigger problem than a shared device. Google saves search history to the account when Web & App Activity is on, and the account is the same on every phone and laptop signed into it. Somebody researching quietly, weeks or months before they act, is not going to leave a trail through the middle of the house. Some have safety reasons for that, and some simply have not decided anything yet and do not want a conversation started for them by a browser suggestion.
So the research that reaches you can arrive in a private window, late, on a phone, and repeat over weeks before anyone calls.
What a private window actually does, and what it does not
Google's own description of Chrome's Incognito mode is narrow. During the session Chrome keeps cookies and site data so pages work; when the session ends it does not retain that data or a record of the sites visited. That is the whole feature. Google's page also says websites you visit, Google's included, may still observe your activity, and that Chrome does not sign you into your Google account automatically.
Location is a separate matter. Google's page on location in Search says any website, google.com included, gets some information about a searcher's general area from their IP address, the number an internet connection presents to every site it visits. Its local ranking page adds that when a searcher does not share where they are, Google uses what it knows about their location. So a private window does not move the searcher. Map results still come out ordered by how close each firm is to them, and your analytics still count the visit.
What it does do is make the same human being look like a brand new person on every visit. Four evenings of research from one anxious person arrives in your reporting as four unrelated strangers who each looked at two pages and left.
Your own searches are the worst evidence you have
This one can cost a firm money in wasted decisions.
When you search your own firm's name, or "divorce lawyer near me," Google shapes what you see by where you are, and by past activity when Web & App Activity is on. Google lists distance as one of the three factors behind local results, alongside relevance and popularity. If you check from your desk, you are checking from the one location where your firm's distance score is perfect. Switching to a private window removes the history part and leaves the location part intact, so it improves the evidence without fixing it.
The result is a firm that believes it ranks first because a partner checked from the office, or one that panics because an associate checked from home in the next county. Both readings are wrong for the same reason.
What to use instead: the Performance report inside the Google Business Profile, which reports what actual searchers did, and a grid-based rank checker, which searches from a set of points across the county and shows your position at each one. Seeing that falloff once can change how a firm thinks about which searches are worth chasing.
The numbers that go quiet
Family law suppresses several of the metrics local businesses live by. The table is the short version; the notes under it cover the two that need more than a line.
| Metric | What happens in family law | Read it as |
|---|---|---|
| Direction requests | Clients come by appointment, so few people ask Google for directions | Ignore it |
| Calls from the listing | The call happens later, from a different phone, when the person can talk | A floor, never a total |
| Returning visitors | Every private-window visit is a first visit | Not a customer journey |
| Review count | A client who will not put their name beside a divorce in public leaves no review | Compare only with other family law firms |
Reviews deserve the extra line because the comparison trap is expensive. Google names popularity as a ranking factor and says review count and score feed into it, so reviews are not optional. But the practice next door that fixes teeth has a client base with no reason to stay anonymous. A smaller number of reviews with a considered reply under each is the honest shape of a family law profile, and the review requests guide covers how to ask without steering.
The second is hours. A search at eleven at night lands on a profile whose listed hours say the office is not open. That does not stop somebody adding you to a shortlist for the morning, and it makes the hours you list and where the phone goes after five matter more than they do for a daytime business.
Google turned off Business Profile chat and call history on July 31, 2024. If an older checklist tells you to switch on messaging or read the call log inside the profile, that control is gone. You still receive calls from the listing, and the Performance report still counts them.
What to measure instead
Trends over quarters, not weeks. This is slow-moving work in a slow-moving practice area, and the honest comparison is this quarter against the same quarter last year, so a seasonal swing does not read as a result.
The split between people who searched for your firm by name and people who found you by searching for the service. Google's Performance report lists the search terms people used to find your business. Sort them yourself: any term containing your firm's name or an attorney's name is a name search; "divorce lawyer," "family law attorney" and the town name are service searches. The second group is the number that tells you whether the local search work is doing anything. Somebody searching your firm name has already been sent to you by something.
Branded search volume over time, for the same reason in reverse. When more people type your firm's name into Google this quarter than last, the discovery happened somewhere earlier and worked.
And the most underrated instrument in the building: whoever answers the phone, asking every caller how they came to ring, and writing down the answer in the caller's own words rather than picking from a dropdown. "I found you on my phone at night and called the next day" is worth more than a dashboard, and after enough of them the pattern is obvious.
A quarterly read for a family law profile, in the order that costs the least:
- Read the Performance report's search terms and sort them into name searches and service searches
- Compare each group with the same quarter last year, not last quarter
- Count calls from the listing as a floor and add the "how did you find us" tally from the front desk
- Check the listed hours and where the phone routes after them, since that is what a late searcher meets
- Compare review count only with other family law profiles in the county
- Skip direction requests and returning-visitor charts entirely
Who this catches hardest
For a mediation or collaborative practice this matters twice over, because the people most drawn to a non-adversarial process overlap heavily with the people searching most carefully. The mediators page covers what that means for positioning. If what you actually want is a straight list of things to check on the profile, that is the Google Maps ranking checklist.
If you would like the measurement set up so that it already allows for the undercount, that is part of the Best size, and the three sizes are compared on the homepage. If you only want a second opinion on a quarter's numbers before you act on them, send the Performance report's search terms to hello@divorceseo.com and I will sort them with you.
Checked against Google help pages on 2026-09-21: How Chrome Incognito keeps your browsing private, Manage your location settings for Google Search, Tips to improve your local ranking on Google, About the Performance report, Changes to Google Business Profile chat and call history, Manage and delete your Search history
Common questions
Does a private window stop Google Analytics from linking the pages someone reads in one sitting?
No. Chrome keeps cookies for the length of the session, so the pages read in one evening still chain together as one visit. The break comes between evenings, when the window is closed and the cookies go with it.
If I check my ranking from a colleague's phone across town, is that a fair test?
Fairer than your desk, but it is still one point. Google scores distance from wherever the searcher is, so one phone gives you one position. A grid tool gives you twenty or more positions across the county and shows where the map pack stops including you.
Where did the chat button on my profile go?
Google removed chat and call history from Business Profiles on July 31, 2024. There is no setting to restore it. Late-night searchers who would have messaged now call in the morning or use the website form, so make sure that form works on a phone.
Are reviews still worth asking for if clients will not leave them?
Yes. Google names review count and score as inputs to popularity, so each one counts. Ask every client at the point the file closes, whatever the mood of the last meeting, and accept that some will say no. What Google forbids in the asking, and which questions belong with your bar counsel, is in the review requests guide.
Canadian? The same three sizes in Canadian dollars are on the CAD pricing page.