Vanity Googling- do you do it?
I’ve read a few posts recently about what I term "Vanity Googling", you know searching for your own name on Google to see what you find. The articles I read said that everyone should check what Google has to say about you and I must admit as on online person I have been doing my Vanity Googling for a long time. It was no surprise to me to find the search on "James Kendrick" shows my stuff appearing very high on Google. While my name is not that common there have been some fairly famous people with the same name so to top this search is pretty cool.
The search that blew me away however was one I did for the first time on "jk". I had not done this search before because I figured that those initials are very common and the results wouldn’t be very useful. Imagine my surprise to find this:
Now that’s pretty cool, only the Harry Potter author comes in higher. Do you search your own name and if so have you ever been surprised by the results?
I don’t have a publicist, so I google myself, my business, and my book regularly (and use google alerts) to keep on top of anything that pops up that might be good (or bad) PR.
I do it every once in a while. Anyone with an online presence should be doing it.
Yes – I am constantly surprised
Funny. My actual full name is pretty distinctive so when I do a vanity google, it takes until the middle of the third page before anything that isn’t me-related even crops up.
Of course the first two pages pretty much outline what I do, who I am, and where I come from. So whoa, does Google have a clear profile of me by now, yikes.
Yes, I do Google myself. Fortunately, there is a high-profile gentleman in the mdeical establishment on the West Coast who comes up for many pages before I do.
There is a much better chance if you Google my usernames.
Woadan
Your ego is driving me from this site. Any other used wares you wanna hawk? Beg for a job?
Even googling “Mickey Segal” comes up with jkontherun as listing #8.
I’m glad there’s not a whole lot of links for my real name.
But for ‘rodfather’, my blog is #2. Woo.
How do you think I feel. 2 1/2 million hits and I am nowhere to be seen. That darned extrovert has stolen my lime light!
Actually when I google my initials, jmbh I come in third so that is not too bad I suppose.
PS. I tried “The Hancocks”, the title of my web site, and I came in first so that is pretty good for such a popular name. I don’t feel so bad now
Searching for GoodThings2Life reveals all the web sites that I post on (Bink.nu, BetaNews, here, and many others) as well as my own web site.
Searching for Aaron Hall reveals my site as number 3 on the list along with a boat load of web sites devoted to the R&B singer of the same name (absolutely no relation, lol).
In any case, yeah, I search pretty often just to see how my site ranks, and to make sure there are no blatant security leaks out there. Posting my name is one thing, but if I ever stumbled across any confidential info like bank info, etc, I would probably be angry.
I most certainly do. My name is very unique in it both its spelling and combination of first and last names. The odd thing is that I have found two other people with the same name but with different spellings of the last name.
I have a Google alert that searches for “first-name last-name” and “last-name first-name” with both spellings of my first name and both spellings of my last name. I receive that alert every day. I also have the same alerts set up for my screen-name.
I do it from time to time, mostly to see how my rank is doing relative to the librarian in Minnesota and those damn Swedes.
One thing I just realized, is that when I see my name in print in close proximity to my most-used online name (ctmagnus), I think “Nachos”.
Of course I do… I’m vain!
Oh hell yeah. I’ve vanity Googled plenty of times. In fact, that’s how I test the strength of search engines that pop up. It’s also how I could see the new Technorati overhaul sucked — the prior Technorati had hundreds of hits for me. The new one has less than a 100! Yeah, Microsoft, your Live Search bites much too!
Oh, it also had WordPress impress the hell out of me. Some search terms have my old blog as the first hit! Suck it, SEO suckahs!