Best Practi
ices fo
or Managing Your O
Online Identi
ity
Find
ding y
yourse
elf online
OK. You'v
ve Googled yo
our name, wh hich everyonee will agree is
s step one. How about the
e steps beyon
nd
that? Her
re are some s
strategies to f
find yourself o
online.
Use quotes — Have you sea
U arched
fo
or your name in quotes ("H Harold
Heard")? You' 'll see a moree
ta
argeted result t set. This gen
neral
st
trategy works s by itself or w
with any
of
f the followinng strategies. A
se
earch engine' 's results are only as good as the query being
put in. Ask many times, many ways.
earch all of your name(s) — Say you ha
Se ave a nicknamme, maiden name, or a nam me under wh hich
yo
ou publish. Seearch these n names as well l ("Harold Heaard", "Harold Heard Jr", “H Hal C Heard Jr r”, "H
Heard", "Heard d, H", ), both with and without quotes.
Tr
ry spelling vaariations — W We as people are bad at sp pelling, and if you've got a complicated
na
ame, people might be writ ting about yoou and spelling your name wrong. Try a a couple of
different spelliing variationss ("Herold", "HHerlod", "Her rd", "Herold HHerd").
Use name asso
U ociation — Sa ay you are aff filiated with a
a project, and
d people talk a about you in the
co
ontext of thiss project. Theey won't alwa ays use your last name. Ha arold, for example, has been
af
ffiliated with Linkedin.com m and Facebook.com. Searches like Har rold Linkedin and Harold
fa
acebook may bring back ne ew results. D
Don't limit youurself with naame associations; you can
se
earch your na ame with thin ngs like your cchurch's name, your home etown, your school's name e, and
so
o on. Howeve er, as the insttitution or pla
ace you assoc ciate yourselff with gets biggger, the channces
of
f the results m
matching you u get smaller, so try and throw additional terms in th here that may y help
yo
ou. An example of a more e targeted sea arch term wo ould be your n name, your co ompany and y your
de
epartment (E Example: Haro old citigroup).
Se
earch for thinngs that don't mention yo ou explicitly —— There's mo ore about you u online than j just
th
he stuff that y
your name! For example, y you’re various profiles in sservices like E
Ebay, Flickr,
Amazon, MySp pace and Epin nions may not t mention your name. The ese are part oof your identity,
nd if you wan
an nt people to s see these pages, link to the em with an op pen ID site lik
ke claimID. If
f
yo
ou've spent a a ton of time w writing Amazon reviews, w why not help people find them?
Don't forget th
D hings you've created — Sa ay you've writtten an article or designed d a Web page e
ab
bout someon ne else. Unless you've crea ated a portfolio page, peop ple won't kno ow that you're e the
cr
reative force behind these e things. Claim
mID is really g
good for creating a portfol lio of the worrk
yo
ou've done. S Sure, these thhings aren't aabout you, but they speak to your online identity. So o go
ah
head and add d 'em!
Created/Managed b
by Harold C. H
Heard Jr. | Fin
nding yoursel
lf online 1

Best Practi
ices fo
or Managing Your O
Online Identi
ity
Remember me emberships, past and pres sent — Your college's web bsite may not t mention you u, but
is
sn't it a part o
of your identitty? You can aadd links to sc
chools you've e attended, places you've
worked, and o
w organizations you've been a member of f. When peop ple visit your s
social sites paages,
th
hey will be ab ble to easily browse throug gh these thing gs that can sp
peak volumes s about your
id
dentity. Don't t limit yourse
elf; it’s about presenting y
your best face e on the net, aand anything that
is
s online that sspeaks to you ur identity is a
absolutely fairr game!
Trry lots of search engines — — Don't limit yourself to juust one search engine. The e internet is mmuch,
much bigger th
m han the size oof all the sear
rch engines' in
ndexes combined. Google, , Yahoo!, MSN N
Seearch, Teoma a, MetaCrawler, Clusty, Ale exa, A9, Dogppile, bing and Ask.com are just a few of f the
se
earch engines s out there. F
Find a huge list of search eengines here.
Auto
omati
ically
track
king your id
dentit
ty
Did you know there are lots of tools s out there thhat will alert y
you when you ur name show ws up online? ? You
can use thhese services to set up wattchlists, so yo
ou're aware o of when some ething about y you shows up p
online. Geenerally, thes
se services will require youu to create ann account, but t all of the service we'll link to
are free. A
And with all o
of these, you can set up nu umerous track king lists with
h a variety of terms as
describedd in the previo
ous section.
Teechnorati Wa atchlists ‐ Acc
cording to Technorati,
a Watchlist is a powerful tool. You simp
"a ply give
Te
echnorati a fe ew words or w website URLs s you're
in
nterested in, aand we'll tell you wheneve er they're
mentioned. It's fun! To star
m rt setting up y
your
Watchlist, all y
W you have to do is sign up fo or a free
Te
echnorati me embership. It's quick and e easy!"
We're big fans
W s of Technorat ti Watchlists, and use
th
hem extensively.
Google Alerts ‐ Another exc
G cellent tool. A
According to G
Google, "Goo ogle Alerts are
e emails
au
utomatically sent to you w when there ar re new Google results for y your search terms. We
cu
urrently offer r three types of alerts: Newws, Web, andd News & Web b." You can b
be notified via
a
emmail or RSS ev very time youur name is me entioned onli
ine. We also u use Google Alerts quite
exxtensively.
Bloglines Sear rch Feeds ‐ Blo oglines, another fantastic tool, will allo
ow you to creaate a search ffeed
off specified terms. This is an excellent coomplement to o the Techno orati Watchlist
t.
This document is const tantly evolvin
ng. If you hav
ve some good d suggestions for managing
g your online
identity (o
or have writte
en a blog post to that effect), we're hap e them here. Please send
ppy to include
suggestions to haroldcchearjr@gmail.com.
Created
d/Managed b
by Harold C. H
Heard Jr. | Au
utomatically tracking your identity 2