How to get your name on Google??

Charlton_King · 9 September 2008 at 10:17AM

Ok so here's a conundrum.

I have no idea where to post this and techie seems as good as anywhere.

Suppose you want to get your name up in lights on search engines - i.e. as many mentions/results as possible - by posting on the internet rather than winning an olympic gold medal!

How might you go about it? I have no idea how search engines select their results but a discussion on this isn't what I'm asking for. I need practical suggestions.

Alan_Cross · 9 September 2008 at 12:26PM

I would think you'd need to post on forums similar to this but can't think of anything else.

trcooke · 9 September 2008 at 12:40PM

As Alan says, you'd need to post in forums a lot. In general search engines results are based on "best fit" of your search term followed by occurrences. In practice it's not as simple as this and the likes of Google employ all sorts of hand waving wizardry to return the most sensible results and I know Google at least have help pages on how to get to the top of their lists.

I suppose the reason you don't want a discussion on this is that there's no sensible reason why you'd want people who've searched your name to be subject to your inane ramblings on MSE forums. A hypothetical scenario covering up some Internet world domination plans I fear...

exup · 9 September 2008 at 1:18PM

looking for myself and found (exup35)

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=exup35&btnG=Search&meta=

Charlton_King · 9 September 2008 at 1:27PM

exup wrote: »

looking for myself and found (exup35)

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=exup35&btnG=Search&meta=

'Exup' is going to figure high because it's an unusual username. If 'Martin Lewis' weren't already famous for his moneysaving exploits, I imagine anyone with that name would find it hard going getting it on google.