I’ve always wanted to make a Tee shirt with a ‘go google yourself’ logo but I’m worried about being sued. Or punched in the nose. What exactly does it mean to ‘google yourself’ anyway? Google is the leading search engine on the interwebs and moved from being a corporate name and trademark to become a verb in modern English. It used to be that we would search for a word or phrase. Now we go and google it. You can google lots of things, including your own name. Why would you want to?

Some people do it out of vanity. Are they on the first page and near the top? Do they have more references than anyone else? A twisted sense of self affirmation for sure. Do you really exist if you don’t show up when you google yourself. Sometimes being obscure is a good thing.

Employers are googling job candidates more often. If they find positive mentions about you that could be good. If they find nasty things attached to your name it could be a missed opportunity and difficult to recover from. Particularly if it isn’t you – just someone with the same name.

Enterprises and organizations should google their names regularly. That is one way to determine how you are known in the marketplace. If anyone out there creates a job position for a ‘CGO – chief googling officer’ let me know. I’ll apply in a minute. You can check me out on google. I’m third from the top on the first page. Or at least I was this morning.

Dean