What Do Agents See When They Google Your Name?

As an actor, our reputation is everything. It no longer takes a private investigator to get the scoop on your entire life. All it takes is an Internet connection and Google!

Have you ever typed your name into Google? Of course you have. It’s called Egosurfing and may not be such a bad thing to do. With the growth of social networking and community-based sites, it will benefit your career (and your pride) to know exactly what’s being printed about you.

Read on to grab your 5 free domain names coupon code…!

What shows up in the search engines?

If you are just starting out in the biz, when you Google your name chances are sites like your myspace and facebook pages will appear. As you move along, you may see your IMDb page and some official movie websites that you were a part of.

Don’t be surprised to also see forum postings that you participated in or your high school website. Sometimes you may not even appear in the search engines… we’ll have to change that!

Who is going to search for you?

Chances are you’ve Googled your favorite actor or an actor you just saw in a movie to learn more about them. Heck, you may have even Googled the name of that special someone you are having a first date with. The ‘powers that be’ are no different. If you are auditioning for a play or film, the production team behind the scenes will want to see what your online reputation reveals about you.

What can you do about your online reputation?

Unless it’s defamation of character, there isn’t a whole lot you can do if you find sites in the search engines about you. You can, however, deal directly with the webmaster of these sites. If it’s a profile you created years ago, ask for it to be removed. If it’s an online conversation about you, get involved. Stick up for your name and/or actions.

You can also make sure that the sites you want to appear high in the search engines come up before some of the, shall we say, less attractive sites. How can we do this?

The best way to control the search results for your name is to buy your name dot com.

This is probably the easiest and best approach to help control your online rep. It is simple, affordable and quick to purchase domain names and, really, you should be the owner of yourname.com not some guy out in Wisconsin who is just waiting for your to make it big before trying to sell the domain back to you at a hefty sum. This stuff happens.

It may also benefit you to grab a few domain names relating to your name. Purchase the .net version along with any other variations such as common misspellings and a hyphenated dot com (IE. your-name.com)

Side note: We have a sweet deal worked out with our partner below where you can receive 5 free domain names. (Thanks, Dotster!)

To Build or Not To Build

Whether you intend to build a website or not, owning your name dot com is a smart move. This could quickly rise to the top of the search engines when someone types in your name, and you get to control the content and your reputation. You can also point the domain name to automatically forward to your facebook page (or any other page) that you desire.

So get out there and take control of your online reputation. I’d be interested to see the progress.

Let’s do this, go over to Google and type your name into the search box. Jot down the top 5 websites that appear in the results and post a comment with your findings. We can combat this together!

Additional resources to stay on top of your online rep:

Buy Your dotcom Domain Name
Grab yourname dot com before someone else does. You can easily build your website or have the domain name forward to an existing page.

Check this out, myShowbiz Talent fans:
5 Free Domains At Dotster With Any Hosting Package! Enter Coupon Code “5FORFREE”

P.S. Make sure to use that Coupon Code or you won’t receive the 5 free domain names!

GoogleAlert
http://www.google.com/alerts Type your name (or any other search term) into the box, and Google will send you updates with relevant results so you can keep tabs on things.

Googlefight
http://www.googlefight.com/
More of a fun tool than a serious one, type any two search terms into the search box and compare the number of search results listed in Google for each. Want to see if your arch nemesis is more popular than you? This is the way to do it.

DogPile
http://www.dogpile.com/ Why search each popular engine individually when you can search 4 at time? Type your search term into the box and dogpile will return results from Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live and Ask.

Google
http://www.google.com Type your name into the search box, jot down the top 5 results and let us know with a comment what appears…!

1 Comment to What Do Agents See When They Google Your Name?

The Website For Actors Checklist - Does Your Actor Website Do More Harm Than Good? | Memorize Shakespeare on February 20th, 2009

1. [...] for your own actor website? How about starting with 5 free domain names? Grab the coupon code [...]

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