I admit it, I search for my name a lot. Firstname Lastname, click, send,
wait, smile! It's exciting to see what the search engines find most relevant
about me. If you haven't tried it yet, you should. Everybody likes to
feel important or at the very least less obscure and more accessible online
to friends, loved ones, fans, viewers, colleagues you name it.
What's interesting is the distinctly different types of websites and information
that the top 3 (Google, MSN, and Yahoo) return in response to a firstname
lastname search. Now a lot of these differences are not specific to a
name search and would fit in the categories of convtionial SEO, but the
reasons why I think it's important to talk about this specific search
separately from regular SEO are:
This search is one of the most important to an individual emotionally.
Your first and last name appears on everything you create. It can represent
your reputation, your family heritage, your professional image, your
expertise, and your experience, all at the same time. Give me another
two search words that cover all of that.
People use their first and last name in documents and websites in
similar ways that differ extensively from other words Most of us, for
example, don't have social networking accounts, blogs, press releases,
work history, personal comments and video files all attached to a string
of keywords like "buy movies now".
Recently, do to the pending release of the free movie Boy Who Never
Slept and an aggressive marketing campaign, references to 'solomon rothman'
have increased dramatically and span many different sources. Considering
this, I thought it would be a perfect time to do a search comparison
on the different types of results to gain a fresh perspective on name
searches and what each of the search engines prefer.
Initial things to note:
My myspace account is very new with almost to no outside links pointing
at it.
I use my real name solomonrothman in my usernames for website profile
pages. Examples of this are below. www.myspace.com/solomonrothman
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Solomonrothman Search results by each
engine for solomon rothman
On MSN (results summarized in bullets)
My website
My profile page on associated content
My profile page on Design Firms
My profile page on Blog Flux
My user page on Wikipedia
Google Video listing
Contact page ontop design firms
On Yahoo (results summarized in bullets)
The other solomon rothman's website (not me)
My website
Specific associated content articles
Deep pages within my website
Archive.org
Press releases
Creative commons blog
Directories
Comments I made on some substantial blogs
Dig article
Google video
On Google (results summarized in bullets )
My website
My user profile at Associated Content
Profile at blog Flux
WikiNews Article
Design Firms Profile
Internet Archive
Feedburner URL
Lots of Press Releases
Google Video listing
Wikipedia User Page
Myspace Profile
This is my no means scientific, but by comparing all three there are
some interesting conclusions that could be drawn or at least hypothesized
about. You would of course need a lot more test data, to make any concrete,
but here are some interesting comparisons. Analysis on searching for a
persons name or first name, last name searches
Commonalities among all 3:
My personal website to be the most important / relevant (yahoo liked
the personal website of the other solomon rothman more)
Individual Google Video Listings were included in the top results
Individual Relevancy Preferences MSN
Values both topic related and general Profile and user pages on large
established websites and social networks over other results.
Wikipedia pages including user pages
Link Directories
It's interesting that it brings up my wikiusername page on the first
page results, this is just a free userpage used to let editors I may be
working with know more about me.
Yahoo
Specific Articles (as opposed to the profile pages at article submission
or promotion sites) * Deep pages within personal website
Internet Archive Listings (put them above Google Video)
Listings and tag entires on technorati.com (blog search engine with
listings and tags)
Google
Highly values profile pages on topical sites like (designfirms.org)
Myspace
Wikinews items rank very high
Internet Archive Video Listings appear extrmeley high
Individual Video Listing from other video distrubition websites like
bolt, and vivemo.
Feedburner urls
Press releases
Individual Dislikes or things that seen to rank substantially lower specifically
on these engines MSN
Doesn't rank press releases very high in results for a person's name,
puts them after profile pages, and directories.
Listings and tag entires on technorati.com (blog search engine with
listings and tags) none show up in the top 100.
Yahoo
Wikipedia Items (not one listing in the top 100, as opposed to msn,
(in top 10) and Google in top 30
Google # listings and tag entries on technorati.com
Remember that I use my real name as my username and repeat it specifically
on the about me pages etc of each of these websites, that I'm sure obviously
if you don't use your first name or last name on these sites, they won't
come up.
Interesting things to note:
In the top 50 resutls of MSN was included my user page on the social
bookmarking system del.icio.us/solomonrothman . That's extremely intesting
because in the meta tags on that page say no index, no follow and no archive:
It appears msn is not only indexing this page, but ranking it above other
information rich sites for certain keywords. Yet another reason to start
Social Bookmarketing.
Interesting trends applicable to all searches Video in regular search
results
Video listings, especially on Google Video and the Internet Archive are
showing up for regular keyword searches that don't use the word video,
movie, etc. It appears all the search engines consider topic specific
videos (at least the video listing pages) to be as relevant as regular
information / text rich websites. A great example is search google for
Helicopter fire California. Thinking the "old way" I would guess
this search to bring up news articles using those keywords, and it does
for some of the results.
In the first 15 entires there are 3 separate references to a video file
I uploaded showing a helicopter drop over a fire in California. 2 separate
entries for various listing on archive.org and another listing for the
google video listing.
This is very powerful and although it may have been prominent in the past,
I don't remember bringing up very many video listings on my normal searches,
but things are changing, video is becoming the new sought-after relevant
content in the online arena.
My space is a very powerfully free resource(other social networks are
too) Even without any additional promotion (outside links for example)
my myspace account ranked among the top sites in for my name in both MSN
and Google. That's huge. If you want to put some information on the top
spots for a name search and don't have a lot of time/budget/knowledge
to undergo an SEO campaign, consider joining myspace and using your real
first and last name.
You could have your personal page among the top spots in a matter of weeks.
Of course if your name is extremely common, this tactic probably won't
work. No luck for John Smith.
Wikipedia is a great place to contribute information As an extra bonus
you may receive some Search Engine Recognition for it
Articles are still a great way to promote yourself and there are some
great places that will even pay you for your published articles and still
link to your site.
