The outcome of Googling myself
October 11, 2014
Reputation management was the theme for class this week and now it is time to focus on our assignment–Googling ourselves.
In the event that you were unaware, there is also an Australian vocalist named Megan Washington. How rad is that?! Someone that I share a name with also loves music just as much as I do! Anyway, the point of me telling you that is I immediately knew that any type of Google search may be difficult to turn up results on me unless the search terms were very specific.
Our directions are to Google our name and email address. I know walking into this that if I do not Google my name and email address together or other specific terms like, “Megan Washington sports,” or “Megan Washington wrestling,” I was not going to get anything back on myself. That other Megan Washington is a pretty cool gal.
My Results:
I have blurred out search results of irrelevant information or of images that do not belong to me.
The video results from the search turned up both MLB Fan Cave videos and video interviews that I have done with musical artists over the years.
The most popular images associated with my name and email address were photos that I have taken at concerts, one of myself interviewing former professional baseball player and current ESPN analyst Aaron Boone, one of my head shots, a few photos from different blog entries and an image I had uploaded to Instagram.
Surprises:
My highest result was my LinkedIn profile and not my Google associated accounts on YouTube or Google+.
The video results also turned up a Vimeo link as the first result rather than anything from my YouTube channels. The videos were also not the most popular on any of the YouTube channels. It is funny that videos with only a few hundred views showed up before the ones with over 30,000 views.
What was really surprising to me is that out of all of the things I have done and posted on the internet, the things that turned up the most were from this website, meganwashington.net. I also was completely overcome with happiness when I found so many of my photos from Flickr that I have taken of different musical artists over the years were shared on Tumblr communities and were posted on Pinterest! The fact that so many people actually enjoy what I am able to capture through my lens just puts a huge smile on my face since I am self-taught.
Needless to say, I was quite proud of everything that I was able to uncover through the search about myself. I personally think I should share more of my own photography on Pinterest since others are doing so. I think this could help bring additional awareness to what I do and to fans of the artists.
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Tags: assignment, google, mmc5427, reputation management, results
Megan,
Its cool that you had such a wonderful experience googling yourself.
Its not surprising that your website came up higher in the rankings. Mine did the same thing. My employer actually came up first. I think my employers gets more links and followers than me because my name is associated with it.
I am glad you only found good things about you.
As a professor, I saw my name in Rank Your Professor. I haven’t opened it yet. I am too scared to what they will say.
Maybe I shouldn’t worry about it so much.
Thank you for sharing.
Ron
Hi Ron,
I was happy that I only found positive things about myself too! What a dreadful “surprise” for anyone who learns they have some negative energy with others.
I would be nervous to see how people rated me too! It’s so subjective and yet it does mean something to you. If you feel you are providing the best learning experience to your students that you are capable of giving, then that’s all that should matter.
Hi Megan,
How amazingly rewarding it must feel to uncover some of these results and pleasant surprises?! Congratulations! And I’ve noticed you’re even re-strategizing a bit based on what you’ve discovered. Amazing!
LinkedIn featured pretty prominently in my search results as well, especially in the image search. If it weren’t for my LinkedIn profile image, I would not have featured at all in the image search. This is quite surprising as I’m featured in a few press stories as a Director of the Tourism Development Company in Trinidad & Tobago, which also appear online.
In closing, and I’m sure I mentioned this about your overall blog look and feel before, but I love the set-up and imagery you’ve taken the time to prepare in a beautiful way.
Hey Ryan,
Thank you!
I would venture to think that Google’s algorithms would have ranked the stories you were featured in from the press higher since your search was coming from a specific area. There they go again surprising everyone!
It is definitely exciting to uncover positive things when you do a search about yourself. After reading a few different blogs from fellow classmates, I’m not sure how I would have reacted to having my name attached to crazy and untrue stories. Yikes!