Written on June 1st, 2008 at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse
What Does Google Say About You?
What does someone searching Google for your name or blog name find?
Earlier in the year I met a blogger at a conference who I had a pretty good conversation with. He had pitched me an idea for something that we might one day work on together. However when I got home, while I could remember his name I couldn’t remember his blog’s URL.
So I did what everyone would do and ‘Googled Him’ (by the way – I can’t believe that ‘Googled’ doesn’t come up in my spell check).
What I found when Googling him was not his blog (or not immediately) but the first three search results for his name were:
- a rant about him written by another blogger who complained that that he’d left comment spam on his blog
- his Flickr account which had pictures of him with scantily dressed women at an Adult Entertainment convention
- another rant from another blogger who he’d had a fight with (ironically over the same idea he’d pitched to me)
When I finally found his blog’s URL (it was 10th for his name) I decided to search Google for the blog’s name and found a similar list of links in the top search results.
This blogger has a reputation management problem – at least when it comes to Google.
Whether there is truth in the allegations made by the other bloggers I’m not sure – but certainly the impression you get of this guy when you type his name and his blog’s name into Google is not a positive one. It’d be enough to put off potential business partners, some potential life partners and potential readers.
There is an element in the search results for your name or blog’s name that is out of your control as a blogger. It depends upon what others write about you and the ranking of their site’s in Google – however there are things that you can do to help get the results that you want to the top of the rankings.
1. Identify Which Pages You Want to Rank Highest For - Obviously you want to rank highest for your blog’s home page when someone searches for your blog’s name but there is more than one search result above the fold that people will see – so what other pages do you want to rank well for? One that I always try to boost are my ‘about pages’. Knowing which pages you’re attempting to rank higher enables you to target them in the strategies outlined below.
2. Link to Key Pages – perhaps one of the best things that you can do is to link to the pages that you want to rank well for your name. Link to them from other sites that you have control over (social media sites and your other blogs), link to them from your own site (for example here at ProBlogger I link to my ‘about page’ from every page on my blog and as a result it ranks highly for my name) and when you have control over how others link to you get them to link to those key pages (for example when you guest blog you might ask them to link to your about page).
3. Use Your Name in Links – this is something I don’t need to do (after years of building up the ranking of my blog) but link to your about page with your name. Search Engines look at the words used in the links pointing at your pages to work out what they are about. If you have a link to your about page that simply says ‘about’ or ‘about me’ then it doesn’t tell Google what the page is really about. Instead use About Darren or About Darren Rowse type links and it’ll add to the power of the links to rank for those terms.
4. Use Your Name on Highlighted Pages – a search engine won’t rank a page for a term that is not used on that page. If you want to rank for your name or blog name on a particular page you need to use that term and use it more than once. This means on an About page that you’ll want to talk about yourself in the third person or at least find some way of incorporating your name into it. Name images on the page with your name, title the page with your name, use your name in headings, make it bold etc. All of these things signal to Google that your page is about the words you’re highlighting.
5. Use Social Media Sites as Secondary Ranking Pages – if you look at the search results for ProBlogger you’ll find that my ProBlogger twitter page, my ProBlogger Stumbleupon page, my ProBlogger Mybloglog page, my facebook page all rank for the term. This means that instead of just coming in at #1 and #2 search results for a page (for your blog’s front page and your about page) you can potentially rank for all of the top results for your name. Some of these social media sites naturally rank very well in search engines as they have so many incoming links but if you link to them (like I do in my footer) you can give them an extra boost. You can also help boost the ranking of all of your pages with some interlinking between them – this particularly helps as they will all be ranking well for your keywords.
6. Manage negative pages – so what happens when a page that is negative towards you ranks highly? Sometimes it’s difficult to have much control over these pages but there are often opportunities to manage the situation. If it’s a blog post – attempt to leave a comment that balances out the post and answers the concerns in it. If it’s not you might want to try reasoning with the site owner.
7. Remember Everything Online is Permanent and ‘Builds’ Your Brand – keep in mind that everything you put on the web is permanent. Even if content is deleted it is usually recorded somewhere in an internet archive page and it can come back to bite you later. Not only is the content online permanent but it all says something about you and your brand. This doesn’t help you fix poor online reputation – but I guess should serve as a warning as you build content online (whether on your own blog or not).
58 Responses to “What Does Google Say About You?” - Add Yours
Shaun
June 1st, 2008 12:31 am
I’m an internet marketer who likes philosophy and religion, going by Google. Pretty spot on, too.
Great article.
Miguel Alvarez
June 1st, 2008 12:31 am
You’re right… It’s funny how people always think that when they delete something from their sites, it’s a closed case. They never seem to consider that archive.org spiders are there to record the damage. ;)
Cheers!
Miguel Alvarez
MarketingFactor.com
Martyn
June 1st, 2008 12:36 am
One easy step to take is to be kind and friendly, to everyone and steer clear of anything that could be seen as morally inappropriate! Then hopefully nothing bad will get written about you and damage your reputation.
Martyn.
Michelle
June 1st, 2008 1:01 am
I have been monitoring both my own name and that of my business using Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts). It works wonderfully as an additional tool to manage my online reputation.
Miguel Cangueiro
June 1st, 2008 1:06 am
A few days ago, here in portugal, someone wrote in a blog a false quote that lead to a debate and the blogsphere was criticised a lot here.
Oli Kenobbi
June 1st, 2008 1:12 am
If you search for Oli Kenobi on Google, you’ll see a link to my homepage and my Tumblelog, then comments I left on highly ranked blogs.
But you won’t find anything at all about me if you search for my real name (yeah, Oli Kenobi isn’t my real name, would have been cool though). The results are other people who have the same name as mine, but they’re not me.
I’m using the internet since more than 10 years, I’m a web developer (so the internet is my playground), and there’s no trace of my real name in Google, I’m proud of this.
Anyway, even though I’m using a nickname, I do care about what I write and share on the internet.
Aaron from Webspear
June 1st, 2008 1:17 am
You have to be very professional and ethical on what you say and do online. Many folks make mistakes not deliberately, but because of online fatigue, they occasionally go off track.
Nowadays as bloggers you face more scrutiny than ever before.
Nice tips on Google Optimization.
You can see some more tips on http://www.webspear.com/seo/10-spots-to-stick-your-keyword/
Susan Cartier Liebel
June 1st, 2008 1:22 am
This is an excellent post. So often people take this lightly and do not understand the impact of what they write or say and how it gets indexed.
This ‘deletion’ issue also holds true for pictures you think you may have ‘removed.’ This happened to a student of mine and it was a nightmare to finally remove the picture.
Noobpreneur
June 1st, 2008 1:30 am
Darren,
Great post! I’ve searched for my name and of course my blog’s name to see what would people see if they searched them.
Luckily, I found my name and blog name in good shape (well, several attacks on my blog posts are there, but all are manageable :P)
Yes, Google is good for investigating someone you plan to work with in the future – just to make sure you ‘fit in’ with your future partners.
Cheers!
cb
June 1st, 2008 1:49 am
My name (first and surname) are actually shared with a reasonably famous singer – I think that skews the results a little bit – I think that takes up about the first 20 pages of Google and then.. there’s a transsexual model who is also using the name!
Fortunately, I don’t think I could be mistaken for either but it was quite an entertaining exercise.
deuts
June 1st, 2008 1:56 am
I do have problem related to this. I always battle to make my blog (or my about page for that matter) to be the no. 1 in the search result for my name. Oftentimes, my profiles in forums and even in social networking sites make it to the top. I’ve tried hiding my real names in my profiles in the other sites and optimizing my blog for search engines (starting with the SEO plugin) to no avail. Hmmmm.
Tony
June 1st, 2008 2:12 am
very good advice, I have had some pages removed form a long time age as well. Now I am pretty careful what I say. Thanks for the article.
Sarah
June 1st, 2008 2:19 am
Hmm well, that’s cool and all…
But what if you have a name like say… Sarah (not Jessica) Parker? Is there any hope for me? :)
At least my blog name comes up at no. 4 out of 200K…that’s a little better.
ramiro marques
June 1st, 2008 2:21 am
This is one of the best posts I have read about “What Google Says About You”. When I search my name, Ramiro Marques, on Google I find in te first place my website, not my blogs. I would like to find first my blogs but I do not kow how to do.
I visit Problogger very day and have learned a lot about blogging with you.
Thanks.
I am from Portugal.
Rajeev Edmonds
June 1st, 2008 2:48 am
On of my fellow blogger is upset because his profile of ‘Adult Dating Site’ comes first in SERP’s while Googling his name. And Icing on the cake is this, that he forgot the password of that profile.
Rajeev Edmonds
June 1st, 2008 2:49 am
One of my fellow blogger is upset because his profile of ‘Adult Dating Site’ comes first in SERP’s while Googling his name. And Icing on the cake is this, that he forgot the password of that profile.
Make Money Talks
June 1st, 2008 2:57 am
My blog is on page 3 on Google
for my site keyword phrase.
Anant Shrivastava
June 1st, 2008 3:20 am
definetely this is what should come in person’s mind naturally,
my full name is “Anant Shrivastava”
when i searched on google with my name a few month’s ago, all i got on front page was reference to a bollywood movie where legendary mr. amitabh bachchan played a role of DSP “Anant Shrivastava” but then i vowed to change this and guess what.
check on the name
“Anant Shrivastava” – my name
“anantshri” – my internet handle.
“Techno enthusiast” – my blog handle.
all of them refer to me.
and that too on first link basis.
the main work that i did was to combine or tie up all my links with each other which included all my public profiles.
I hope this can help someone.
NOTE : i even have my pic on first seach result by my name.
Kevin Thomas
June 1st, 2008 4:22 am
Well just out of curiosity I decided to try this out. I haven’t been around on the blogosphere long enough for me to be concerned about negative information, so I wasn’t very concerned there.
I do have to admit I’m a bit worried, a search for my name show’s many Kevin Thomas’s, however none are me :( Does anyone have any advise for branding a fairly common name so that it appears at least near the top? I have a lot of competition. It could be worse though, at least I’m not a John Smith.
When I did the search for my blog name, I’m right on target. I was the first result for my blog name. However if I just put XtremeDIY and omit the .net part my main page is not listed, however one of my articles is and a whole lot of comments on other author’s blogs.
I can see now that I have a lot of work to do to market my names to build a better branding.
Bibokz
June 1st, 2008 4:50 am
Nice concept… Gonna watch for my blog and see to it that i could build a good details to Google. :)
Mandy
June 1st, 2008 5:05 am
Thanks for some good advice again here Darren.
I have the same problem though as Kevin Thomas with having a common name, I’m a Mandy Jones!
I come up fine for my blog name but when I google my name I find there are a lot of Mandy Jones’, and some seem to be ‘very interesting’ with at least one talking about similar subjects that I do (I turn up on page 5).
Although I do rank well for my other blog, if I search for my name and photography (topic of blog obviously) So there is some hope…
I knew I shouldn’t have married a Jones!!!
Faruqi
June 1st, 2008 5:07 am
Wow, this are the REAL tips man! I never think of it. But anyway, thanks a lot. Here’s my conclusion:
>>Make a good reputation through Google.com
>>Make a good reputation and relation among other Bloggers
>>Finally,using Social Media Site
Man, thats why I love Problogger.net so much, tips that never end and innovates a lot.
Success to Bloggers,
Faruqi Jeniri
http://www.ShockingHomeBusiness.com/blog
Adrienne Zurub
June 1st, 2008 5:19 am
Excellent article!
I especially appreciate your advice about the permanency of comments made.
Indeed, it is important to think before you speak…and write!
Adrienne Zurub
http://adriennezurub.typepad.com
Santosh Puthran
June 1st, 2008 6:11 am
Nice advice. The first search results for Santosh Puthran go to my profile on http://www.spock.com. As advise by you, I have to change the Tab About Me to About Santosh Puthran, so that my blog is at the top of search result.
Vered
June 1st, 2008 6:25 am
I didn’t realize you linked to your about page from every page on your blogs. This is interesting. I am going to look into it.
Muscle Post
June 1st, 2008 7:15 am
This is a great idea to make sure when someone Googles your name the page you want is displayed first. I guess people who use their name as their website url have a distinct advantage here because the site itself is their name, so it’s easier to build back links with their name in it.
Michael Carnell
June 1st, 2008 7:42 am
Excellent advice. I find it funny that people who apply for work with me still often are amazed by the fact that I Google them to see what the web says about them. I also look them up on every social networking site that I can think of. Thanks for giving specifics on ways to clean up that negative reputation as well.
Kelvin Kao
June 1st, 2008 8:29 am
What’s interesting is, I share my name with a photographer and a software developer. Every now and then I will Google our shared name, and the pages that came up are always shuffling.
Sandy Naidu
June 1st, 2008 8:37 am
Thanks Darren…Though I myself use Google for researching people, it some how did not occur to me that I can make specific pages come up first when people search for my name…And also using names as links did not occur to me…Thank you and will implement it.
kristarella
June 1st, 2008 11:42 am
Good article!
Ever noticed how a lot of people when they leave appalling comments never leave a link or proper name? I wonder why!
Disappointing, for my real name I used to have the top 2 Google search results relating to me and both were science things (my current field of study), now only one of them is on the front page, many of the results aren’t me. Some of the results are Facebook.
“kristarella” is all me though. I’m wondering if I should start to associate kristarella with my real name…
Melvin
June 1st, 2008 12:10 pm
It’s funny that sometimes when your blog is lowly ranked, you’ll noticed that social media even ranks higher than the site or brand… ;-)
Deron Dohanich
June 1st, 2008 12:32 pm
Interesting post Darren. I google my name as well as friends and relatives. Its a good way to see how well your name propagates through the net especially when writing articles. Lesson learned…don’t say/write something that you may regret later!
Barbara Ling (aka Owlbert)
June 1st, 2008 8:52 pm
Morning,
Having been online now since 1988 (and I can still see the posts I wrote at several Usenet groups online), I’m glad that I internalized netiquette from the get-go (ie, never write anything about which you’d be embarrassed if your spouse or parents or children saw).
I have the unique case that the other main Barbara Ling is a set designer for Batman and Robin, so my name is often associated with Hollywood. :)
Setting up google alerts for your name, your name in quotes, your Twitter ID, your FriendFeed ID, heck, every ID….is a smart thing to do.
Data points,
Barbara
Alex D
June 1st, 2008 10:11 pm
Haha, poor guy, lucky me I don’t rank for such bad terms :).
Paul @ Webdistortion
June 1st, 2008 10:26 pm
I think the most of us in the Blogosphere take heed towards reputation management, but all of this is good stuff – providing that you dont end up with the reverse effect – social media sites outranking your own site, which may not be the effect you want if your own site either sells or promotes something in connection with your name.
Rajaie AlKorani
June 1st, 2008 10:33 pm
I don’t have a problem with that since not many people have the same name as mine :)
Instead of trying to manage negative pages, you should try not to make them appear in the first place!
Dario Salvelli
June 1st, 2008 11:24 pm
All things that i know, good and simple article! ;)
Rajeev Edmonds
June 1st, 2008 11:57 pm
Darren,
My same comment came twice, because my system hanged as I pressed the ‘Submit’ button. So I pressed it again. Hope I won’t be considered as spammer.
Pentad
June 2nd, 2008 1:03 am
I especially appreciated the SEO tips in this post. Thanks. I’ll get working on that.
guardian angel
June 2nd, 2008 1:44 am
After reading this post, I checked my pen name on google search but all I found was a bunch of sites about guardian angel the angels and not guardian angel the blogger.
However when I search my real name – Angel Cuala, it resulted to links to the directories I joined and where I use my real name outside my blog.
It’s funny that I do not reveal my name on my blog for privacy purposes but ironically, it is more popular than my blogs at google search.
I think I now have to reveal my real name on my blog and the next time I post a comment on other blogs which includes your humble blog.
Thanks for enlightening me.
dandellion Kimban
June 2nd, 2008 5:58 am
Great advices as always. I don’t know how it happened, but my blog stands on google’s no.1 for my name. Well, one thing less to think about :)
Btw, google doesn’t go red in spell checkers, cause “to google” is a recognized verb of English language. Check mirriam-Webster http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/google
Goinggreenmom
June 2nd, 2008 7:49 am
After reading this I started checking out my screen names. My newest of Goinggreenmom is top 2 of 4! My name itself reveals one of my lenses on squidoo in the second position on the first page, a cybertown colony apartment from when I was 15 (10 yrs ago!!!) and a comment on another blog in the first page. 2 other listings in first 5 pages including where I made the Dean’s list for the fall semester last school year (Yippee!).
I also have a screen name I have used for over a year for personal stuff and is a wonderfully obscure combo of gemstones so does not turn up personal profiles on anything.
My project now is getting things ranked where I want them and more visibility. Thanks for all the awesome tips, I’m new to the blogosphere so didn’t know any of it!
~Megan Waugh (Goinggreenmom)
Michael
June 2nd, 2008 7:59 am
Unfortunately when you Google my name you get a bunch of people that aren’t me, my name is fairly common so it is much harder for me to deal with this, but luckily when you put my blogs name in Google the first result is my blog.
Robert L Gisel
June 2nd, 2008 8:56 am
This will be very useful to know once I actually develope some traffic. And since my webmaster is right now building me a better site this is good insight how to link it up. Right now it’s not starnge Google can’t find my blog as no one else can either.
I’m just wondering how you link from the About Me page. Oh I get it, thinking out loud here, you put them little blue spots on the text. Those blue words with the hidden link code. What’s that called? I’ll have to add that to my Bloggers Dictionary: WhoWouldWrite.blogspot.com.
See I still have to spell out the address as I don’t know the trick yet. Usually I’m pretty smart but on the computer I have an IQ of about 70. Maybe someone can tell me what that is called, those blue links I mean.
Goinggreenmom
June 2nd, 2008 11:52 am
I am just getting back into the internet thing, even though I used to do things back when it was generally writing the code.
The code that I would use would be to put What you want to put in the line of text here only take the astricks out of the code.
Sorry, I don’t know if it will work in the programs you are using or not. I know that my mom has found that some of the things she works with will do the coding as part of the program and therefore won’t work if she just adds the code (I know this was the case with ebay).
I would love to hear what the more savvy tech people on here are doing if there is an easier way to do that.
~Megan Waugh (Goinggreenmom)
kristarella
June 2nd, 2008 12:04 pm
Robert & Goinggreenmom –
I think what you’re referring to are hyperlinks, which use anchors in HTML.
Rather than write a whole bunch of code here have a look at HTML links on the W3 Schools site. You only used this code when you’re writing your posts in HTML, or in the “code editor” if you’re using the “visual editor” aka WYSIWYG editor, the you highlight the word that you want to make a link out of, click on the link button and paste the URL into the pop-up box.
kristarella
June 2nd, 2008 12:06 pm
Sorry, that was a horribly long sentence. Hope it made sense!
netblogger4
June 2nd, 2008 8:30 pm
another very useful post. it stresses on the importance of online reputation.
Tudor Ciurescu
June 3rd, 2008 4:34 am
one of the best way to determine what does google is thinking about you is to use the free tool, from stompernet.
the tool is called stompernet site seer. Try it. You will be amazed of what google thinks about you.
Nice article, by the way.
blue star web design ireland
June 4th, 2008 3:16 am
i think a lot of people forget the reach of google, everyone should google their own name from time to time to see what google is throwing up..
Robert L Gisel
June 4th, 2008 10:42 am
@ Krisarella. OMG it works! You’re really smart. Turns out blogger uses WYSIWYG and it worked just like you said: have the link URL on copy, highlight the word, click on the link icon (I didn’t know before this there was one) and bang! You’re hyperlinked.
I’m going to be a lincoln fool after this, lincoln this, lincoln that.
Now I’ll have to add this to my Blogger Dictionary. (WYSIWYG: Grandmother talking to the new born baby.)
Robert L Gisel
June 4th, 2008 10:54 am
I got so excited there about being able to do an embedded link now I forgot waht we were talking about.
Earlier there was a comment but I couldn’t locate it jsut now scrolling up – the one that it would be a good idea from time to time to Google one’s one name keep aprised of what comes up. This so true.
When I first Googles my name nothing really came up the was me. Now I tried it again and found someone had referred to my name from a blog comment where I was no longer getting the info on new comments. This was good refewrence and good news as I had actually wanted to connect back up with that blogger’s interesting blog.
So yeah, Google yersef!!
Phil Sexton
June 10th, 2008 5:37 am
Thanks for the tips! I’ve only linked to the about page a couple of times. Time to pick it up!
Cris Cuthbertson
June 17th, 2008 3:10 pm
This was a really inspiring post. I am a real-world doctor and I started to think about how this is important for professionals as well as bloggers. I don’t make much money out of my blogs yet, so I don’t want my professional “brand” diluted by my blog promotion.
I guess there are some people reading this site that are in the same situation of having to have their offline career and brand continue full steam while their blogging sideline grows.
I think that the archaic concept of a home page, updated by many now as an online resume is very useful to doctors and other professionals. I can use Darren’s techniques to promote it, and I no longer have any confusion about which address to put in my sig line when posting.
I have expanded more on this topic here:
http://applequack.com/2008/06/17/why-real-world-professionals-need-an-online-brand/
Robert L. Gisel
July 6th, 2008 6:23 am
Well, it seems a correct spelling of the URL in the WYSIWIG makes a difference. For some reason, on the comments I gave before, when you click on my name goes to a typo “Wko” for “Who” so you don’t get to WhoWouldWrite.blogspot.com. So no one gets a laugh from my Blogger Un-Dictionary. What a Waste!
Moral of the story: Type it right!
WhoWouldWrite.blogspot.com
Delima
December 17th, 2008 7:09 pm
hmm… specially in business at least everything should be positive, i already tried a service like this in a certain company called MYeReputation.com last 2 years ago and they are great. Your online reputation is very important when speacially your doing business online
David
December 24th, 2008 2:58 pm
great post Darren!
I have to work on my seo for my new blog!
great information.
I love your style of writing… very direct and informative.
David King,
http://davidbeking.com
Replica Rolex
February 14th, 2009 2:08 pm
I enjoyed reading your work! GREAT post! I looked around for this… but I found you! :) Anyway, would you mind if I threw up a backlink from my site at whiterabbitcult.com to your site?
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