I’m so vain…. I probably think this post is about me….
Probably only people who do vanity searches notice this, but there are spiders pulling names off web sites. They link the names to companies, blogs, and other web content. Supposedly, these sites allow online reputation control. Rather than you claiming your identity as others in this market, they list you in their database with the hopes you claim it.
See, you probably have accounts on several web sites. The idea is to both aggregate the accounts and prove ownership. If your name is John Smith, then you probably are getting confused with other John Smiths. You’ll provide where you work, contact info, which sites belong to you. The site will provide a feed showing your activity in each of these.
My name is pretty unique. If you saw my full name on a site, then would you doubt that its me. Okay, let’s forget the guy who masqueraded with my name a few years ago. Lots of people say I have the best names. He took it too far. By contrast, there are others with my first name who pop up higher in Google. So, you’d need the whole thing. I notice people arrive at this site by putting that name in search engines, so I am pretty sure it works. Naturally, all the sites where I wish to stay under the radar don’t have my name on them.
🙂
See… I knew I’d make this post about me.
Am I the only one who remembers fascination with the Deep Web (aka Invisible Web)? The idea of these online reputation services, I think, is to bring positive content up in rankings up to the more shallow areas. Trick is, the users need to be aware of what is and is not positive. Linking your name to your Facebook (used to be Deep Web but less and less of late) profile and giving the world access to pictures of you passed out drunk probably isn’t positive online reputation control.
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