A great piece over at Michael Gray’s blog about google adwords scoring of your name and other implications.

How important is it how your name is ranked or seen?

If you have a common name it can be very difficult to even come up in google at all plus most people want to fly under the radar and never come up on the internet.

This is a debate I’ve had for quite a while with friends and colleagues. It’s not uncommon for anyone from future employers to friends to long lost friends and relatives to enter your name into Google, Yahoo or MSN trying to find something of interest on you. This could be good or could be bad depending on how you look at it. How many times have you googled someone? Did you like what you found?

I could write ten pages either for or against this but I think I can sum it up in two basic scenarios.

Scenario 1:
Your a consultant involved with the internet looking for potential clients and to establish yourself within the internet professional community

This gets tricky for a lot of people. Everyone wants to see your body of work but most internet professionals hold their sites near and dear almost like intellectual property. So the question is how much to release? That’s what blogs are for thats what this blog is primarily about. Writing about the internet and the value you add building a name for yourself.

Scenario 2:

A professional looking for work or future career opportunities. I’m a firm believer in guerilla marketing and a big fan of Jay Conrad Levinson. Anything that sets you apart from the competition and gives you a bump. Most people don’t have their own web sites? Most people don’t own their own name on the internet. It took me three years to acquire my name as a dotcom and I have a unique if not unusual last name go figure?

I tend to believe if you are a professional involved with the internet you should want your name to come up at the top of google listings. Look at the success LinkedIn has had signing up millions of people to their service creating individual profiles. Linkedin gives you the opportunity to make your profile into your own URL.

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