InsideGoogle

Do You Google Your Kid’s Name Before They’re Born

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today about people who have to deal with having a bad Google footprint. It talks about a woman who had many Google results (due to a unique last name), important for her published research papers, and then got married. She changed her name (to her husband’s common last name, Wilson), and as a result people can’t find her anymore, and certainly not her important research.

It begs the question: What the hell are you supposed to do? My wife got married and changed her name, and her old last name was very unique (full name Google results: 1,600). She has the top six Google results for her name, albeit most of those times I mentioned her. Her new last name increases the Google results for her name 100-fold, to 111,000, although she still has the top two results. Still, if we have gotten married older, after she had built a professional reputation under her old name, what would she do?

One option I’ve seen is women who go by their maiden name as their professional name. It’s not a terrible idea. If you get married after 30, maybe you should be one name legally (or even hyphenate), and your old name professionally. Another option is to republish old information, perhaps with a token update, and author it as your new name (with a line saying “Originally published as”), and get an important website to publish the new versions.

I always tell people how important it is that you dominate your Google results. I do, and I use that to my advantage (”Where’s your blog?” “Google my name”). Everyone should have a personal website, with professional information or articles related to your job, and then you should leave comments on professional websites with your full name and a link back to your site. Do this long enough, and your site will be near the top, and many of the sites in the Google results will be important sites you’ve left comments on.

So, here’s where we get to babies. If you are expecting, do you plan your baby’s name around Google? I know what I want to name my first boy, and he’d have to beat over one million moderately interesting people, none of whom dominate the results. Number one is a jazz musician who recorded a single CD five years ago. By simply writing about his birth, I’m likely to take a top five spot.

One thing: You want a domain name in your kid’s name. In this case, it’s taken by the Jazz musician, but it may expire this December. The same domain, with a dash between the first and last names, is not taken. I can go there.

Oh, and if your last name is Smith, and you name your kid John, just give up. Seriously. You’re not even trying.

May 8th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Search, General | 6 comments