Private Eyes, They’re Googling You

The other day, a PR rep asked me for my bio, a request I don’t often get. I wondered if perhaps she had tried to Google me and hadn’t come up with much. She probably found, as I’ve done before when I’ve Googled myself for fun, that most people looking for a “Julia Chang” out there are actually searching for information on an eponymous female warrior from the video game Tekken 3.

Googling people for background information is as common now as searching for people in a telephone book was a decade ago. Any salesperson worth his salt will, at the very least, do a preliminary search on a prospect before stepping foot in his office.

But what if you’re the one being Googled? Do you know what information about yourself is out there? I once Googled a sales executive I had interviewed because I wanted to confirm some basic information about him that I could easily find on the Web. His name (and his company, for that matter) showed up on a Web site for cross-dressers. I became embarrassed when I clicked the link and saw what it was—not as a judgment on his personal life, but because I was stumbling on information that was none of my business. As it turned out, a press release mentioning him and his company was on the site for no visibly apparent reason; from what I could tell, he had no affiliation with the group. How or why this release ended up on there is a mystery, but it did teach me one thing—it’s probably a good idea to search for yourself and your company once in a while to make sure your name is where it's supposed to be.

Luckily for those Googling and those being Googled, there are search engines now that produce results that are more on target for professional searches. A search for my name on ZoomInfo, for instance, turns me up as the number one contender, just above an acupuncturist. At least I beat out a video game vixen here. Other people-based search engines like Ziggs, or tapping into the numerous social-networking sites out there, can also help researching reps find professional profiles without the fear of feeling like a digital voyeur.

And of course, when all else fails, there’s always Google.

Comments

[NFL Jerseys]

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[Corris]

This is a great topic. I use Google to find out about everyone and everything i'm interested in. Click here to read how I discovered a marketer disguised as a dog trainer. We should be more aware of the kinds of info on the 'net that may be associated with our names.