Online Reputation: How To Look Better In Google [Infographic]

These days, our online reputation is as important as our offline one. Many people work hard to keep all their social media accounts spic and span so that if potential business partners, employers or personal contacts look them up, all the information will paint a nice picture of their lives, interests, and accomplishments. However, there is one small detail which is often overlooked when we do our housekeeping duties for our online reputation. And, as it turns out, it’s not such a small detail after all. Of course, I’m talking about our online reputation on Google.

I’m sure you’ve Googled yourself before. Did you like what you found? There are one billion names searched on Google every day, and there is a pretty good chance sooner or later someone is going to Google you and make a judgment about you based on the information found there. If there is someone with a bad reputation who shares the same name as you, you might be familiar with the headaches this can cause. That’s where online reputation services like Reputation and BrandYourself (a free DIY platform) come into play.

I thought this infographic called Breakdown Of A Person’s Google Results by BrandYourself was very interesting because it points out which of your social media sites will help your online reputation get stronger when you add content, and which ones don’t rank well so they won’t help you much. After all, 94% of people only look at the first page of Google anyway.

LinkedIn ranks the highest. WordPress trumps Tumblr. Flickr is the only photo site to rank in the first two pages and Foursquare and StumbleUpon aren’t even in the top twenty. I haven’t personally tried the BrandYourself service, but I read today that it will not only alert you if something important happens to your Google results, but it will also let you know who is Googling you and researching you. That’s nuts! You can look at that from the flip side also. I don’t want people to know if I Google them. I read somewhere that these days people want their 15 minutes of fame, but in the future, they’ll want 15 minutes of anonymity.