I read this piece in the Wall Street Journal online today about a pregnant woman who Googled all the potential names for her baby to make sure the name she and her husband picked for the kid would be searchable. From the article:
Before Abigail Garvey got married in 2000, anyone could easily Google her. Then she swapped her maiden name for her husband's last name, Wilson, and dropped out of sight.
In Web-search results for her new name, links to Ms. Wilson's epidemiology research papers became lost among all manner of other Abigail Wilsons, ranging from 1980s newspaper wedding announcements for various Abigail Wilsons to genealogy records listing Abigail Wilsons born in the 1600s and 1700s. When Ms. Wilson applied for a new job, interviewers questioned the publications she listed on her résumé because they weren't finding the publications in online searches, Ms. Wilson says. (See Google results for Abigail Garvey and Abigail Wilson.)
So when Ms. Wilson, now 32, was pregnant with her first child, she ran every baby name she and her husband, Justin, considered through Google to make sure her baby wouldn't be born unsearchable. Her top choice: Kohler, an old family name that had the key, rare distinction of being uncommon on the Web when paired with Wilson. "Justin and I wanted our son's name to be as special as he is," she explains.
And here's a bonus they don't mention: the kid can ride the advertising coattails of the Kohler company that makes plumbing fixtures.
This got me to thinking about how searchable my name is. Turns out that thanks to this blog and the fact that my name is plastered all over some former employers' websites I'm doing okay. Type in Jon Lowder, even without the quotation marks and my blog comes up first and a bunch of work stuff, my LinkedIn profile and other stuff related to me comes up in the first few pages. So I decided to see how I do with just Jon. There I don't appear until the 9th page of results (54th position) but that's okay considering that there are some pretty web-loved Jon's out there: Jon Stewart, Jon Udell, and Jon Lebkowsky. Wait...who?! I'm being beaten by a guy named Lebkowsky and who names his blog "Weblogsky"? At first I thought maybe it was a fan site for The Big Lebowski but I was wrong. Ends up its just a blog by a guy named Jon Lebkowsky, and from my short reading I'll have to begrudgingly admit that it's a good blog. Okay, it's a better blog than mine, but that doesn't help my ego.
So I decide to try just Lowder. How many Lowders can there be? More than you'd think, but I still do relatively well by coming in at #3. A company called LowderNewHomes is number one and a former soap opera star (Days of Our Lives) named Kyle Lowder comes in number two. Not bad.
Knowing one's place in the universe is a good thing. Thanks Google.
