Interesting reading from today’s Wall Street Journal. In the article, You’re a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well, author Abigail Wilson looks at the importance of unique human names as a means of achieving high ranking search results. The idea: the internet and in particular search results are such valuable ‘identity real-estate’ that human names are being judged by their SEO potential.
The article presents a few anecdotes about families who insist on naming their children with very unique names (Kohler) so that they will be raised ’optimized’ for Google. The best point of the article is that if someone switches their name, it can be difficult to find websites and work attributed to them under the old name ’“ it makes me wonder if fewer and fewer women might take the husband’s last name, especially as the median marriage age increases (thereby allowing people more time to establish themselves professionally).
Some choice stats: ’About 7% of all searches are for a person’s name, estimates search engine Ask.com. More than 80% of executive recruiters said they routinely use search engines to learn more about candidates’ ’Â�
…I should work on a list of high page-ranking (PR) websites for people to create profiles on’ anyone want to help or have suggestions?