Do you Google yourself?

[Enzie Shahmiri]

Just recently, I had been listening to a radio program about companies whose job is to surf the net and delete any sort of embarrassing or incriminating information left behind on the net. Apparently employees have gotten into the habit of doing a "Google"search before hiring new prospects and what they find can sometimes cost the applicant the desired position.

Example:
A company was going to hire an Investment Executive. While doing a name search they found this individual frequenting gambling sites and decided to offer the position to someone else. The company felt that this individual apparently was too fond of gambling, too much of a risk taker and felt he would be the wrong candidate for the said position.

Rude comments, fowl language, fraternity pictures in front of tables of empty beer bottles, or you in a less than flattering Halloween costume, when posted on sites by either you or your friends can end up in all sort of places which you might not even be aware of.

Apparently deleting unwanted material can be rather difficult, especially if your name or image has landed on a site of which you are not a member of. Ask yourself, is this the image you want to portray to a potential client, who might google you?

IWhen I created my own web site a counter was added, that would show me from which sites people where being referred to my site. Imagine my surprise, when one day I saw someone came through a link of a porn site. When I googled my name, my web site popped up on even more porn sites. I was mortified, knowing that I have a really bad memory, I started to wonder has it gone this bad, that I have forgotten something crucial about some double live? Well, I decided to investigate and guess what the culprit was?! In my html code, I had written "middot" which places this mark <.> before a sentence. I don't know what other meaning this word might have, but it cropped up a lot on these sites. When I took it out of the html code, eventually my web site disappeared from those sites. To this day, I don't know if this was the reason, all I can say is that I did not want my name or web site to be associated in any form with such sites.

Over the years, I have come to notice that many sites will pick up your site and include it in their directories without prior notification. This can be a good thing, but we all should be aware of how our names are being used and how we are portrayed to the world in general. So google yourself! You might be surprised what you might find!