What’s your Google reputation saying about you?
At my sons wrestling match, I ran into a relative I’d not seen in ages. She and I hugged and exchanged pleasantries and the promise to stay in touch, but neither of us had pen and paper to jot down numbers or email addresses.
What I said next blew the minds of a few people sitting within earshot. All I said was “don’t worry, I’m very Googleable.”
Her reaction was a slight giggle followed by the question/statement “Googleable huh?”
Of course I do tend to wonder what people may uncover among those 22,500 results a single search will yield. God knows I’ve done my share of ranting on my blogs. And while I do try to keep a respective limit on my writing and not write anything I’d not want someone I know to read, I’m sure there are plenty of things that would not receive the seal of approval of many of my family members.
What about you? Are you Googleable and what does a Google search say about you?
Have you ever used Google in place of a business card to tell someone how to get in touch with you?
Here’s a very good article on how Your Google reputation could cost you a job
Tags: google, online profile, online reputation, google search, online searches
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I searched my name. I was the 7th site on the first page. Wow! I was surprised. There were also a lot of other people with my name, but that were not me. How odd!
I did like what the search said about me. It was a post I made about my daughter, my inspiration.
I keep waiting and hoping I don’t find some dirt on me from a disgruntled person from my past. Knock on wood…
I would love for people to be able to just Google me but my name is really hard to spell. My current business card features a sketch by Hugh MacLeod so I’m happy to have something to hand out.
I have always found it best to work under a false name on the internet. Privacy is important to me and having everything i’ve ever said / posted on the internet available to everyone who searches for me would be quite a scary thought.
I am able to have people use Google with my name and find me. They can also just use it directly http://www.johnhunter.com. With Google you never know what might happen in the future though. Fortunately, for years I have been in the top few results - the other name that pops up is one of those called the “father of modern surgery.” He died in 1793 though so confusing those results with me isn’t too likely.
Also Google results are getting more and more personalized (based on you past search history). So what you see as the results might be very different than what others see.
@ Hsien - I wonder if working claiming key terms for all the ways your name could be mispelled might do the trick? I’ve done that with mispellings in my main niche and it’s worked quite well
@ PG - I can see wanting to remain anonymous and I was there myself some time ago. I just had gotten to the point that I wanted to be known for my good work and if that meant having people not agree with me all the time, that’s the breaks.
Well I’m really googleable then. Eeek, a bit too much, not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing but no one can ever say they don’t know how to contact me now. lol
What a great idea! I know that my husband is very jealous as I appear on Google a lot and he doesn’t at all. I do have 2 websites and 5 blogs and he has none, so not surprising really!
Just linked to this post: http://blog.feefifoto.com/2008/01/thursday-thir-2.html
Having started as a writer online almost 9 years ago, I can tell you I HATE that my name is everywhere. Now I write under a different name or take on projects where my name will never be placed online. When I got divorced and started dating again, it was awful! My new partners ex-wife looked me up and literally started stalking me, we had to go to court. Ugh, not fun.
My name comes up with 9 results. Unfortunately, 6 of them sound like a lawsuit case. In fact, they are all the same case and it was simply a case of a domain name dispute. I was what it looks like to others who don’t understand, probably that I’m always in court and being sued.