Have You Googled Your Name Lately?

One of the goals of the last redesign of the Matrix Group Web site was to make my bio more prominent in search engines. I had previously resisted putting any information about me on the Web site for a variety of reasons, but my new biz team reasoned that since I do a lot of speaking and writing, people will Google my name; when that happens, we want the Matrix Group Web site to pop-up on the first page, if not first on the list of results.

I typed “joanna pineda” into Google tonight and this is what I found:

• An interview that I did for The Washington Post back in 2003 is the number one result.  This makes sense, given The Post’s Google page rank.  Here’s a wikipedia page on how Google page rank works.
• This blog, The Matrix Files, is the 3rd listing.  This is great, exactly what we wanted.  The blog strategy is working.
• The About Joanna Pineda page on the Matrix Group Web site is the 4th listing.  Fabulous.

So far, so good, but wait, here’s some bad stuff that I found:

• My “public” Facebook profile included a list of my “friends.”  I was very surprised because I was positive that I had made my profile viewable only by friends.  I quickly found the search setting and made only the existence of my Facebook profile public.
• Jigsaw.com has me correctly affiliated with Matrix Group International, but it lists Stephen Brown as the CEO.  Aaargh.  We have tried numerous times to get this listing corrected, but to no avail.  Time to try again.
• Spoke.com has me correctly affiliated with Matrix Group International, but it lists random people I don’t know as my General Manager and Operations Manager.  <sigh>  It’s going to be a challenge to get that listing corrected.
• Huffington Post shows the corner where I live and that I donated $500 to the 2008 presidential election.  So much for paying the phone company for a private listing and being super careful to always use my work address on applications.

So what’s the lesson here?  I’m not actually sure because so much of our lives are public these days.  Heck, many of us do a lot of the broadcasting deliberately through blogs and social network sites.  But I do know that it’s important to review what the Web is saying about you on a regular basis because you never know who is going to google your name.

BTW, check out some new additions to my blog, including:

• New project profiles in the footer
• A feed of photos from the Matrix Group Flickr feed on the right
• A feed of bookmarks from the Matrix Group Ma.gnolia account on the right
• My latest Twitter post

Yeah, I know, I blog, I tweet, I’m on Facebook and I’m complaining about what you can find out about me on Google.  Silly me.