Yesterday the Bay East Association of REALTORS was fortunate enough to have Pat Kitano come to speak to our members about the google land grab and the importance of effective internet marketing strategies. One of the leading points Pat made was the importance of securing your online identity, which I have branded “E”dentity.
For those who know me, security particularly personal security is one my passions. As a society we have gained an unprecedented knowledge about each other and while I believe that is essentially a great thing it does have its issues. For instance what happens if you share a name with a person that goes out and acts like a complete jerk. I am sure the 81 people I found using yahoo people search with the name of Ted Bundy cringe whenever he is mentioned in the news.
More and more managers and potential clients are turning to Google to do a back ground search on people before hiring, dating, marrying, or even doing business with them. Now, with a name like Ted Bundy which is infamous it is easy to explain away the Google Results as a case of mistaken identity.
What happens when you have “unique” name for instance my name Mark Flavin it is a fairly uncommon name but if you do a search for Mark Flavin on Google you find a Basketball Player, an Internet Marketing “Guru”, and me the Director of IT for the Bay East Association of REALTORS. Well if you are reading this blog then you probably know who I am, but lets say you did not…
How then can you separate the wheat from the chaff as it were.
If you search in google for “Mark Flavin” you will get 11,300 results
by changing our search to “Mark Flavin” -”basketball” you get 10,200 results add -”basket ball” and we trim it down to 10,100
Now by submitting the search of “Mark Flavin” -”basketball” -”basket ball” -marketing -marketer +”real estate” we get 148 result most of them dealing with me. Please note the plus is not really necessary just illustrating that we are adding the term of real estate.
If you want to know whenever someone posts a comment or a review about your specific identity search it is an easy matter to go to Google Alerts and setup a notification on that search. Google will then automatically let you know when something has been added to your search results.
-Mark Flavin
[…] Reputation management “EDentity” is important to manage and something that people are not as aware of as they should be. […]
[…] represented. Simple, by starting a local Internet advertising campaign. If you read my article on managing your “Edentity” then the principles are the […]
FOr those who are not terribly tech savvy, and even some of those who are, clicking the ‘advanced search’ option next to the google search button allows you to learn the syntax of the google search. The advanced search is a WYSIWYG way to use operators to modify your search, and see them echoed back to you in the syntax google displays at the top of the search results page. Try it! Go to google, click ‘advanced search,’ make some choices, and run the search. Be sure to read the syntax that google gives back to you, and you will be ready for the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button soon!
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