
Do You Google Yourself? Are You Hiring? - beniaminmincu
http://priceonomics.com/do-you-google-yourself-are-you-hiring/
======
Timothee
I started to work at AdRoll a few months ago and it got me to think of
different ways to use retargeting, while remembering about this story.

For example, if you're looking for a job as a designer or an engineer (or
whatever else), you're likely to have a site to show some of your projects.
Potential recruiters that end up visiting your site can then be advertised to
specifically.

I was also thinking of blogs: you can probably recapture an audience when you
write a new post. I.e. one of your posts gets popular on Hacker News, but
people won't necessarily start following you or subscribing, but you could
advertise for your new posts later.

I'm surprised not to have heard of another story similar to that Google one
since then, but there is potential if you think about it.

edit: actually, I remember reading about a guy who had targeted his
significant other using a Facebook ad for some purpose (maybe a proposal?).

~~~
digitalboss
Congrats on the new job.

Have you tried Geeklist [https://geekli.st](https://geekli.st) ?

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flexd
Over the years I've been sort of refining what you get when you search my
name.

So if you search for my name on either Google or DuckDuckGo now, the top 5-6
results are about me. It's mostly just Facebook/Twitter/GitHub/LinkedIn and
other things like that, but they are all me.

I guess that is positive when I'm finished with school and need to start
applying for jobs :-)

I'm not sure it will even pay off, it's not that you need to do that much,
just try to get stuff you do not want to show up removed.

Covering up something stupid (with any kind of spread) probably isn't going to
work. But if you have a completely unrelated result showing up for a hobby of
yours that doesn't really need to be on 'your' front page then you can make
small edits to make it rank worse. Perhaps remove your name, or write it
differently just that one time.

Given a bit of time you can end up with only the results you want, provided
you aren't known enough for someone to be writing about what you are doing
with your life.

~~~
peterjmag
Back in 2002, shortly after GTA3 was released for PC, I started getting
involved in its then-fledgling modding community. I created a really basic map
mod early on, and then a bit later, I worked on a couple of slightly more
advanced things, including a sort of modding tutorial. As the community grew,
my stuff started popping up everywhere[1], and a little blurb in some issue of
PC Gamer even named me as one of the "pioneers" of GTA3 modding.

Fast forward four or five years, and GTA3 related results still dominated
Google searches for my name. I was just about to go to college, and I had an
initial phone interview for a part time sysadmin job at a small company close
to campus. During the call, the owner of the company happened to google me and
suddenly went silent. After a few very long seconds, I piped up:

"...hello?"

"...uh, yeah. So, what's all this about grand theft auto? Were you charged?"

It took me a moment to realize what he was seeing, but once I did, I cracked
up. I did my best to explain that it referred to a computer game, not a
felony. I even tried to turn it into a selling point, using it as an example
of how long I'd been hacking, tweaking, etc. I'm not still not sure he was
entirely convinced, but nevertheless, he ended up calling me in for a second
interview.

Today, the top results for my name are a bit more professional: my portfolio
site, LinkedIn, Facebook, and so on. However, down near the bottom of the
first page, you can still find a reference to my stint as a professional
carjacker—uh, I mean as a GTA3 modder.

[1] I won't link to them here directly, but if you're curious, it wouldn't
take much digging to find my full name and check it out yourself.

~~~
flexd
Haha, that's brilliant :-)

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grey-area
Another cute trick is to put places on google maps at 0,0 or another strategic
location, so that anyone looking at a place with that location will find it.
Last I looked Ace Advertising Signs had put a place at 0,0, it's been removed
now I think but you can still see the icon at certain zoom levels on classic
maps as the tiles are cached:

[https://www.google.com/maps?q=0,0&ll=0,0&z=17&output=classic](https://www.google.com/maps?q=0,0&ll=0,0&z=17&output=classic)

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jonboutelle
This reminds me of the age-old (apocryphal?) trick of buying google ads geo-
targeted at SandHill road in Palo Alto when you're raising VC money.

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ankit84
Over some 2 years back I tried this and it worked. I auctioned founder's name
in Google Adwords and got call for interview in next 2 days. However, they did
not offer the job :(

Btw, that company itself earns most of the money by ads :P

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JumpCrisscross
Unless he has the ad executives' consent it was a bad move posting their full
names in the video. Something I've noticed about mavericks (myself included,
to a degree) is the willingness to engage is unusual/risky behaviour
transcends the generally desirable (given that the "desirable" is classically
the usual and proven). Arguing against myself, however, advertising is a
fertile home for a maverick.

Generalising the experiment, I'm now curious about soliciting executives for
business via this method.

~~~
tempestn
These people are essentially famous in their business; what's the harm of
posting their names in a video?

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le205
This also happens in reverse - recruitment agencies bidding on names of
prospects. Certainly got my attention when I was first targeted by this
approach.

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ds9
I know the people reading this and posting here are, for the most part,
particularly those who don't mind having their real info out on the web - but
for anyone who cares about privacy or being tracked it's worth noting the
info-exposure aspect of self-Googling.

Google and other search engines, I would guess, have some algorithm that kicks
in when someone searches on a person name, and calculates a probability that
the searcher is the person whose name is searched on. This in turn may enable
linking the real name with the set of data associated with the searcher by
other means (e.g. hits on Google APIs, Google Analytics, etc., plus whatever
other data the search engine has from other tracking and data-mining sources).

Of course much of one's online profile may be already linked with one's RW
identity, but the self-Googling may add some previously semi-anonymous data to
the profile.

~~~
cbr
If you're worried about this, use an incognito window to search for your name.
Its a good idea anyway, because it turns off personalization.

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D9u
I googled my name and found 57 others with the same name... None of those 57
names were mine though.

~~~
conroy
It doesn't matter if you don't find yourself, as long as your search term
(your name) matched. So as long as some one knows your name (and that you
might Google yourself), there is a good chance you'd see it.

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consz
My name is entirely unique, I've never found a reference to anyone else but
myself when I google my own name. Thankfully, the references are relatively
good/professional, but it's still a bit disconcerting.

------
mikevm
I google myself all the time:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbk4Bvic5jA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbk4Bvic5jA)

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mtrimpe
A bit late to the party here, but if you want to help non-technical people
manage their personal SEO, Brand Yourself [1] is a pretty cool startup that
helps with this.

[1] [http://brandyourself.com/](http://brandyourself.com/)

