In his post “The first thing to do this year“, Seth Godin suggests Googling yourself:
If you’re a salesperson, your prospects already do.
If you’re looking for a job, your prospective employers already do.
If you’ve got a job, your co-workers already do.
I’d add, “If you’re a teacher, your students already do.” (An interesting aside: my students frequently Google my name to find the class blog.)
Seth’s right, you can improve your appearance and “be finished by tonight.” Here are fast ways to spruce up your Google appearance:
- Get LinkedIn. It’s social networking for your resume and highly ranked in Google.
- Rate something on Amazon and complete your profile.
- Leave comments on blogs. Highly-read blogs usually rate high on Google.
- Do all of the above using the name folks are likely to Google.
What do you get when you Google yourself?
Technorati Tags: google, egosurf, sethgodin, linkedin, teaching, amazon
Megan Hayes-Golding 
A friend of mine released a free ebook on this topic today. Must be a lot of people thinking about it. There are a lot of good ways to build up an Internet presence.
The ebook is at http://effectiveinternetpresence.com/articles/effective-internet-presence.pdf and I thought it well done.
Megan,
I am always amazed that I come up first and pretty much fill the whole page when I Google myself. I think a side effect of that (or maybe of not being careful enough) is that I get lots of spam on the email account that I usually use.
Is there an issue with identity theft?
Janice
@Alfred: Thanks for sharing the link to the ebook. The author starts off with some great statistics on what are googling interviewees, and concludes with, “If you don’t exist online, do you really exist?” I’ve been amazed at the lack of online presence for some very young people I know. The ebook has great details for folks to develop an online presence legitimately.
@Janice: Great question! I think there are 2 issues in your question — spam harvesting and identity theft.
Post your email address on the web and spammers can harvest it. Don’t post your email and no one can contact you through email. I vote for posting your email address and letting a spam filter get rid of the bad stuff. My gmail address is all over the place, yet I get little spam. Perhaps your volume of spam could be reduced with a new email address or a new spam filter?
RE: Identity theft. I see the risk I take in putting personally identifying information out there to be worth it so I may get the rewards of the online presence. Finding a job and doing professional development are just 2 ways I use my online brand.