What’s in a name?
May 10, 2007 | 3 Comments
Have you ever googled your name? Don’t be shy, everyone seems to be doing it. Ask.com says that 7% of all web searches are for someone’s name (WSJ). In fact, The Wall Street Journal recently claimed that “You’re a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well.” In the article, they quote Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer, with saying:
Any time you can distinguish yourself with a distinctive name or a distinctive characteristic that sticks out in people’s minds, that’s going to be the best solution.
This quest for distinctive characteristics is driving people do some very interesting things. I’m sure you’ve already heard that potential employers are googling applicant names to see what comes up (all you psycho MySpacers with all your bulletins and pictures from that totally awesome party last year be warned). The “vanity searching” doesn’t stop there. Apparently some authors are starting to include their middle name in publications so that they are easier to find among search engine results and parents-to-be are searching potential name combinations to see if their child will be unique — based solely on google positioning, of course and not, you know, personality and character.
So what’s in a name? If you google Justin Cox, my name in case you don’t really know what you’re reading, you’ll see that I’m the number one result which, of course, makes me the coolest Justin Cox to have ever lived in the history of the planet. If you are somehow able to skip the first result and peruse some of the other 3 million results, you’ll find Justin Cox: the Photographer, Justin Cox: the Hockey Player, Justin Cox: the Graduate Assistant, Justin Cox: the Socyberty Author, Justin Cox: the Graphic Designer, Justin Cox: the Evangelist, Justin Cox: the Editor-at-Large, Justin Cox: the Recovering American, Justin Cox: the Cox Built Owner, and well I think you get the point.
It’s good to see that in this technology age where privacy doesn’t actually exist I’m the coolest Justin Cox in the world.