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Why You Need to Monitor Your Online Reputation

there are a whole lot of people around with the same name as me, so it's a sort of built in anonymity. there's still lots of stuff i wouldn't post online though.
 
I had someone bitch at me about my posting (on another forum). Her point was that one of my professors who is working and counseling me might google my name. Ummmmm, I don't think any of my professors are going to find much googling "Lysis." I saw her point, but that's why you have your forum name completely separate from your real name.
 
MynameisnotDeja said:
Apparently it's not that simple. I found this:

Google uses a mathematic formula called an algorithm to determine a particular sites search engine results. This formula has around two hundred components, each looking at a specific part of what Google feels is important to establish a ranking for a particular website as it pertains to specific key word searches. Parts of the formula carry more weight than others. Individual teams work on individual segments of the formula, refining it, tweaking it, changing it in an attempt to give only the best and most relevant results when a search is performed.
Website traffic is a part of the equation, but it carries only a small portion of the overall trust ranking.
Meta tags are one fraction of a part of this process. Meta Titles play a good role and have a fair amount of weight in the process. Meta Keywords by comparison have almost no significant weight in the process because they have been so misused over the years Google has turned that to count far less than it once did.
There are "Off Page" factors such as who on the web is pointing to you. (links) Links from reputable sites that have something in common with yours can add significant trust to your sight. Links from less reputable sites, sites in different countries, sites that Google has internally flagged as spam sites will lower your trust ranking and hurt your results.
"On Page," factors include to some extent key word usage, density and phraseology. If other sites that rank well in your desired keywords, use words in a certain order and your site doesn't, you won't do as well. For instance if you want to rank well for "used cars," and you say, "check out our autos that are already discounted because they are used..." don't expect it to work well for you.
Other things Google takes in to consideration is the age of the domain, Who owns it, the history of the site. (note: just buying an old domain name does not help. If you are the new owner your trust ranking usually starts over from zero) If the person that owned that domain previously was using bad SEO practices, it can help the domain to change hands however it does not insure that Google will just forgive and forget. Thus if you buy a domain name it may be good to check out the history first.
Where the website is hosted is also a factor. It may be cheaper to have your website hosted on a main frame in some other part of the world but because of massive amounts of spam and false links have tried to fool Google from out of country, sites hosted in the USA rank better here than those sites from out of country. Likewise if you are trying to rank well in the UK, a site hosted there will do better there.
Is it hopeless? By no means. It just takes time and practice doing the things that prove to Google you deserve to be considered relevant to rank well in a search.
In order to out rank the number one guy, you are going to have to broaden the scope of your attack.

Haha cool! I got the number one spot without having to do anything! Now I just have to use it to advertise my name and use it to promote something. lol
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Deja, first, it takes a month or three (lol) to clibm googles indexing ladder. Second, their mathematical calculation isn't known, but what is commonly known is that targeting certain keyword phrases and links that go back to your site play a big part in it.
 
I googled my name and the first hit was facebook, the second was my name on the deans list for my college... so I think im good! whew! hehe
 
awhile back i deleted all mentions of my name on this site cause it kept popping up.
 
that reminds me, occasionally i will get a PM from someone trying to erase their past on here, where i had quoted their name or handle or something.

i am perfectly willing to do this, but for crying out loud give me a link to the post. i'm not gonna waste my time looking for it myself.
 
MynameisnotDeja said:
WHat determines where something comes up on a google search?

When I google my name, my facebook comes up as the number one response. Yet when I google my friends names, none of theirs comes up at all, at least not on the first couple pages.

I have been trying to figure out why this is. I would think my page shouldn't come up first, as my name, Andi Loveall, is the same as 4 smaller words ("And I, love all") which are commonly used in the middle of a sentence. Almost all the other entries which came up were things like "And I love all those blah blah that did this or that"..

So what determines where something comes up on google? lol this is tripping me out. I must know. I googled ALL of my friends today and none of their facebooks come up!
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I think it depends on how common your name is.

My name is very uncommon. There is only one other, as far as I can tell, and he has only one google hit that I can see. The rest of the first 8 pages are me. I became very angry with a friend who published a story about his dream in which he describes us going into a wild party and eating shrooms, and he used my real name. It shows up on the 4th google page and even though he changed my name to person X in his story, the google search has not changed.

Oh, and folks -- IMPORTANT!!!!!!! -- You can CHANGE your facebook settings such that you do NOT show up in and public listings. They make it hard to do and the default setting is that you DO show up, but you can change it.
 
ThaiDie4 said:
I googled my name and the first hit was facebook, the second was my name on the deans list for my college... so I think im good! whew! hehe
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Sweet! It's not just me then. LOL we just rock. :D

that reminds me, occasionally i will get a PM from someone trying to erase their past on here, where i had quoted their name or handle or something.
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Yeah that's happened to me too. The person did give me a link. I never would have done it otherwise. And only because they asked nicely!
 
Anyone still do this these days? Are there better techniques you'd recommend?
 
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