Cleaning up your act Online

About a month ago I mentioned a press release which talked about "Internet Reputation".  I promised some tips on how to clean up your web identity.

It's not just potential employers who could be using search engines to find out information about you (as a potential employee) it may also be potential clients.  So even if you aren't looking for a new job it's worth assessing your internet reputation.

The first thing to do is check out your online presence by typing your name (in quote marks) into Google and Yahoo.  For my name I got 670 results in Google and 819 in Yahoo and with my surname (Triance) I know they'll mostly relate to the real me.  However, if your name is Catherine West you'll find plenty of false returns.  You may need to add extra keywords (such as your field of expertise) to find the pages relevant to you.  What you need to bear in mind is that the difficult-to-find pages will be just as difficult for a potential employer/client to find as for you.

You should then scan the first few pages of search results (there is a statistic somewhere that says few people get beyond page three of search engine results).  If you find something you'd rather not be there (photos of your stag night at a lap-dancing club, a late night, drunken, discussion board post, etc) try contacting the site's owner and ask that it be removed.  Luckily (so far) I've not found anything unsavoury about myself on the web, but I have heard that a simple request for removal is often honoured.

If you can't get the web site to remove the offending article you can try to cover it up by ensuring more positive information sits at the top of the search results.  Start your own web page or blog and create very positive LinkedIn and Ecademy profiles.  Mine seem to always be close to the top of the search engine results.

I'm sure I came across a company in the US who you can pay to monitor and help clean up your web identity.  My powers of searching have let me down as I can't find it today.  Or maybe they don't operate any more.  Anyway, unless you have a serious lap-dancing addiction you can probably sort most things yourself.

Comments

[kelvin newman]

It's also worth setting up google alerts with your name. It means google will send you an email every time your name is mentioned online.

See if anyone is bad mouthing you or singing your praises behind your back.