Google Your Name

Seth Godin has a good article on his blog today — Personal Branding in the Age of Google.

He gives an example of a friend who places an ad on Craigslist for a housekeeper and then Googles the names of three applicants. The results are humorous but sad at the same time.

I googled my name a few moments ago — I’ve done that in the past, but have to admit that I don’t do it regularly enough (I was about to set this up as a weekly calendar item, but thought better of it and set up a Google Alert which will email me results every day — Trackle could be helpful with this as well). The results were encouraging — nothing embarrassing! But I did notice that the fourth result for my name was a Twitter post. When I post to my Twitter account, I am often not thinking about how it will look to someone searching for information about me. Something to keep in mind.

Seth Godin is right when he writes:

Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.

A word to the wise for those interested in maintaining their personal brand online.

Tip of the hat to @chrisaperez (also see Chris’ blog).