Someone just
searched you.
What did they find?
Somebody is going to type your name into Google before they hire you, meet you, invest in you or interview you. Most people have never looked properly at what those people see.
Go and do it now, signed out, in a private window. That page is your first impression for most professional situations, and almost nobody has chosen a single thing on it.
This page is about taking control of it, in the order that actually works.
The first-page cleanup, in order
Search yourself properly
Private window, signed out, phone and computer. Write down the first ten results.
Mark each result: you, yours, or someone else
The proportion of someone else tells you whether this is a name problem.
Fix one page on your own domain
Plain facts about who you are. This is the anchor everything else gets checked against.
Make every profile you own say the same thing
Name, title, city, photo. Identical. This is free and it is the highest-value hour you will spend.
Delete or update anything abandoned
An old profile with a five-year-old job title is actively working against you.
Get three third-party pages published this quarter
A podcast listing, a conference page, a quote in trade press. Somebody else's site, your name on it.
Re-check in ninety days, signed out
Compare against the ten results you wrote down. Movement here is the real measurement.
What decides what appears
Two things, and they are separate. First, which pages Google thinks are about you. Second, whether it holds a file on you as a person, which is what produces the box on the right.
You have some influence over the first and almost none directly over the second. Both come from the same underlying work, which is why they are worth doing together.
Anything on the page that you did not create was put there by somebody else, and that is exactly why it carries more weight than your own site does.
Start by seeing what they see
Signed out, private window, and on a phone as well as a computer. Your own logged-in results are personalised and will lie to you comfortably.
Write down the first ten results and mark each one: yours, somebody else's, or a different person entirely.
That third category is the one that changes the plan. If two of the first ten are a different human being, you have a name problem rather than a content problem, and they need different work.
Claim the pages you can control
Your own domain first, with one page that plainly states who you are. This is the anchor and it should never move.
Then the profiles that rank easily for names: professional networks, publication author pages, speaker profiles, any register you belong to.
Make every one of them agree. Same name spelling, same job title, same city, same photograph. Disagreement between your own profiles is the most common self-inflicted problem in this whole field, and it is free to fix.
Then get other people to publish your name
This is the half that decides whether you rank for your own name and whether Google ever opens a file on you.
Guest appearances, podcast listings, conference pages, quotes in trade press, awards judged by somebody else, entries in catalogues and registers.
None of it is glamorous, all of it is slow, and it is the only part that cannot be shortcut, because the entire value is that you did not write it.
When somebody else has your name
First decide whether you can realistically win it. If the other person is far more covered, competing for the plain name is a long and expensive project.
The alternative is to differentiate: use a middle initial, or a fuller form of your name, consistently everywhere from now on. You are building a slightly different name that is unambiguously yours.
This feels like giving up and it usually is not. Owning a distinctive version of your name beats coming second for a common one.
What to do about results you dislike
If it is inaccurate, go to the source and ask for a correction. That works more often than people expect and it costs nothing to try.
If it is accurate but unflattering, removal is generally not available, and pushing it down with better material is the realistic route.
If it is somebody else's content about a different person, the fix is making your own presence unambiguous rather than attacking theirs.
Free fixes, worth an afternoon
- Pick one spelling of your name and make every profile match it
- Pick one photograph and use the same file everywhere
- Make your job title word-for-word identical across profiles
- Add your city to every profile that has a field for it
- Link every profile back to your own website
- Put a plain about page on your own domain and date it
- Close or update profiles you abandoned years ago
- List anything you have published in one place with links
- Then leave it alone for six months and let it settle
How long any of this takes
Profile consistency shows within weeks. Ranking improvements for your own name take a few months. A file being opened takes six to twelve months on a decent starting position.
The order matters more than the effort. Doing the free consistency work first makes everything after it cheaper, and skipping it makes everything after it slower.
What to do about an old article you hate
Check first whether it is factually wrong, because that is a different and much better situation. Publishers correct errors regularly and it costs nothing to ask.
If it is accurate, removal is generally not available. That is uncomfortable and it is the honest position, and any service promising otherwise is describing a request anybody can make for free.
The realistic route is to build enough legitimate material that the article stops being on the first page. Slower than it sounds, and it does work, and it is the same work as everything else on this page.
Why your own website is not enough on its own
A great many people spend money on a beautiful personal site and are surprised when nothing changes. The site is you describing yourself, which is the least persuasive kind of evidence there is.
That does not make it useless. It is the anchor: the fixed, accurate account that everything else gets checked against, and the thing you point every other profile at.
But a site with nothing independent around it is a well-designed assertion. The order that works is site first because it is cheap and fast, then third-party material, and the second half is where the outcome actually comes from.
What changes when you switch jobs or start something
This is the moment most people's search results go stale, and it is also the best opportunity in the cycle.
Update everything you control in one deliberate pass rather than gradually: profiles, author boxes, speaker bios, your own site. Gradual updating means months of your sources contradicting each other.
Then get the new role stated by somebody else. The employer's own site naming you is the single most useful page here, and it is usually available for the asking in your first week.
Expect a quiet period afterwards while the machine works out which version is true. That is normal and the worst response is to change everything again.
More questions
Why does someone else come up when I search my name?
Because Google thinks the name means them. Either they have more coverage, or your own presence is inconsistent enough that it cannot tell you apart.
Can I remove a result I do not like?
Rarely, if it is accurate. Correction at the source works when it is wrong. Otherwise the route is pushing it down with better material.
Does buying ads on my own name help?
It puts an ad above the results and changes nothing underneath. It is rented, not owned, and it stops the day you stop paying.
How long before my own site ranks for my name?
Often a few months for an uncommon name, considerably longer for a common one, and sometimes never against a much better-known namesake.
Do social profiles help?
They rank well for names and they are weak as evidence, because you wrote them. Useful for occupying the page, not for convincing Google who you are.
What if there is nothing about me at all?
That is the most common starting point and it is workable. Consistency first, then get three third-party pages published. Everything follows from those.
Everything else on this, in detail
Seven shorter pages, each answering one question properly.
If you want help with it
Three thousand dollars flat, half at the start and half only when there is something live to show you. Six to twelve months is the honest window, and about a third of the people who ask are told not to proceed.