Open Thread: Would You Change Your Name for Google’s Sake?
May 8th, 2007 (2:56pm) Anne Zelenka 18 Comments
The Wall Street Journal reports that in an age of Googling and online personas, names matter. But not exactly in the way Freakonomists think. No, these days, you’d do well to have an unusual name that will not leave you buried by more famous people in Google searches:
In the age of Google, being special increasingly requires standing out from the crowd online. Many people aspire for themselves — or their offspring — to command prominent placement in the top few links on search engines or social networking sites’ member lookup functions. But, as more people flood the Web, that’s becoming an especially tall order for those with common names. Type “John Smith” into Google’s search engine and it estimates it has 158 million results. (See search results.)
For people prone to vanity searching — punching their own names into search engines — absence from the first pages of search results can bring disappointment. On top of that, some of the “un-Googleables” say being crowded out of search results actually carries a professional and financial price.
Parents even resort to checking Google before naming their children, hoping to give their offspring a leg up in the online market of professional repute.
The Journal suggests a number of ways in which people boost their names in the rankings: cultivating their profiles on LinkedIn, signing up for services like Ziggs, even changing or augmenting their names to make them more distinctive. For example, “Jason Smith” became “Jason McC Smith.” Perhaps they should have mentioned blogging using your own real name as a means of self-centric search engine optimization.
What have you done to boost your rankings on Google? What would you be willing to do?
18 Comments Post your own comment
Anne 2.1 » Blog Archive » A Blogger By Any Other Name Is Not So Highly Ranked says: May 8th, 2007 3:16pm
[...] point of it all is that names are serious these days because it matters how you show up in the Google rankings. Name your children well. And marry well if you’re a woman. Choose a man with an unusual last [...]
Brian Purkiss says: May 8th, 2007 6:28pm
My name is already original - so I don’t have to change it.
But normally I create image links for people to post on their websites/blogs. I also comment on other people’s blogs in hopes of getting noticed, gathering readers, and getting mentioned on other blogs. :-)
Kinda a long shot, but I’m not doing any hardcore advertizing at the moment.
Ben Langhinrichs says: May 8th, 2007 6:38pm
Long before Google, I changed my name, which used to be Ben Lewis, when I got married. Since Ben Langhinrichs is fairly unusual, Google hits tend to be about me.
Anyway, I don’t actively work at making my name popular, but I do use it when blogging and commenting and answering questions on forums. I must be doing something right, as a search for my name gets 97,400 hits, and at least the first several pages are all about me. That is better than Anne Zelenka and Judi Sohn, but nowhere near Om Malik, and about a quarter of those for Mike Gunderloy.
COD says: May 8th, 2007 7:57pm
I share a name with a reasonably popular actor, but I still manage to show up in the top 20 for my name. Years ago I was number 1. I’ve never done anything other than blog consistently and the basic search 101 stuff like make sure my name is in the title tag, etc.
nomadicalloy says: May 8th, 2007 9:14pm
This is stupid.
Brandon Wood says: May 8th, 2007 9:56pm
Apparently I share my name with a minor league baseball player and a golf course in the UK, so I’ve got a little competition, but I’ve managed to climb to the #2 spot on Google for my name after only a few months of blogging. Mostly I just try to be consistent with using my full name in my blog title and in comments on other blogs.
Andrew Flusche says: May 8th, 2007 10:23pm
This is a great post. As you can see, I’ve got a pretty unusual name. People with uncommon names have the constant hassle of spelling it for people, correcting pronunciation, etc. But it does make SEO a bit easier. I actually rank #2 in Google for just my surname. Now I’ve got to bump ancestry.com out of the #1 spot!
The only problem with uncommon names is the likelihood that people will spell them correctly when searching. I guess we should optimize for common misspellings of our names too. :)
Dolly says: May 8th, 2007 11:18pm
This made me smile. When I got married, I changed my unique maiden name to my husband’s pretty commonplace surname _precisely_ because I wanted to make myself harder to net-stalk at will. Pretty happy with it so far.
Thejesh GN says: May 9th, 2007 1:10am
Google finds me easily. My name is kind of unique.
Eric says: May 9th, 2007 6:14am
I also have my google hits all to myself, and there are plenty of them. The self-employed John and Jane Does of the world should probably cook up a distinctive name for their business and use it constantly next to their real name. Alternately, creating a blog with a distinctive name can give them a Google alias that follows them around from employer to employer.
How To: Make yourself more findable on the web at SoftSaurus says: May 9th, 2007 11:42am
[...] The article details how parents are choosing more unique names for their kids, entertainers are Googling stage names to scout the competition, and others are using middle names and other adjustments to make themselves more unique. Here’s more on how to have a say in what Google says about you. —Gina Trapani You’re a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well [WSJ.com via Web Worker Daily] [...]
Joe Flood says: May 9th, 2007 12:19pm
My name, Joe Flood, is not exactly common but it is far from unique. There’s an actor named Joe Flood (he shows up in iMdB) as well as a musician who seems to be increasing in popularity. I have joeflood.com and Joe Flood the musician has joeflood.net (I really should’ve registered that years ago). One day I’m #1 in google and the next day he is. He’s better known than I am but I’ve been on the web longer. He’s got a flash site while I just turned my site into a WordPress blog. It’s an interesting little SEO experiment.
Logical Extremes says: May 9th, 2007 12:52pm
It’s one thing for an adult to decide how “out there” she wants to be with her name and doings. But it just seems wrong to doom a kid to a lack of privacy in this way. There are plenty of other ways to become findable if it’s deemed desirable.
Mrinal says: May 9th, 2007 12:56pm
I would change my name to Gogol
http://mrinal.vox.com/library/post/now-anyone-can-be-a-goog-parent.html
Paul Walker says: May 10th, 2007 2:16am
with a name like mine, NOTHING helps. (though it does make googlism.com rather interesting)
Meinen Namen würde ich nicht ändern; hab ich auch nicht nötig « Marcel Janus - WebLog says: May 10th, 2007 2:40am
[...] Web Worker Daily wurde daraufhin die Frage gestellt ob man bereit sein für ein besseres Google-Listing seinen Namen [...]
Kolz Blog » Blog Archive » How To: Make yourself more findable on the web says: May 19th, 2007 4:56pm
[...] You’re a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well [WSJ.com via Web Worker Daily] [...]
Marriage names and Google rankings: A feminist 2.0 dilemma at Fem2pt0 : society’s issues + women’s voices says: November 21st, 2008 4:46pm
[...] name is forever, once it’s been indexed in Google. There’s been much buzz about how to juice your Google presence by making your name more unusual, but what is a woman to do [...]