I often suggest everyone I know to build a website — be it a blog, wiki, forum, CMS, whatever — even if it only has a single page.
I also suggest people to claim their name online at FirstNameLastName.com. A $10 per year investment in this case is well worth it, just for the simple reason that you now have a personal space online which you can do whatever you want . It’s not for the people who don’t know you, those people don’t care. Instead, it’s for the people who know your real name (future employer with your resume, old friend from college, or relative from overseas) and want to find out more about you — you want to make sure that when they do, they can. Plus, it’s also a good idea to ensure that a Google search of your name doesn’t return some random website with your naked pictures as the first result.
But what if you are not proud of some of the work you have done in the past? Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, it’s out there waiting to be discovered as long as you did it online. And with tools such as Wayback Machine and Google Cached Pages, even after you thought you have deleted everything, it’s still there, available to anyone with an Internet connect and a browser. Lesson to take away? If there is any doubts or indications which you might regret later for posting something online, you are much better off not doing it at all.
P.S. Scroll down to the bottom of a Google search result of your name, have you set up your Google Profile yet?
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