Beta Mum's Blog Beta Mum on 02 Apr 2007 09:48 am
Idle Googling
Keir Royale » Jersey Cow
| And it was at the Weighbridge that I got onto a bus one day and found, scrawled on the back of one of the seats “Cathy Keir is a slag”. It was a shock, … www.cathykeir.co.uk/category/a-crapaud-abroad/ - 25k - [ More results from www.cathykeir.co.uk ] |
It’s not what you expect when you Google yourself, to find on the first page of results, loud and clear and in bold,
“Cathy Keir is a slag”.
It was a shock to see it in its first incarnation, thirty years ago, scratched onto the back of a bus seat in Jersey, and it’s a shock to see it again now.
It’s my fault of course, first for Googling myself (mind you, I defy anyone internet-literate to claim they’ve never done it) and second, for sending out into the ether an article about my formative years on The Rock.
Those formative years included, as they did for most people, a weary familiarity with public transport and a certain amount of warring with teenagers from other schools. This etched bit of bus graffiti was one of the results.
And you can trust me, after all I’m a responsible parent and school governor these days, it wasn’t true, even then.
But even knowing that, I’m not sure how I feel about those words being out there. After all, not everyone’s coated in Teflon.
There are ways of doctoring what Google will come up with though. Apparently if you compile a profile for yourself on sites like Zoom Info, that information will come up first in a search. It’s a way of sanitising what prospective employers will discover about you.
But can it create different profiles for different searchers?
Can it be programmed to work out whether it’s a high-paying employer or a potential hot date who’s clicking the keyboard in search of the real you?
Perhaps it could prepare a tempting “Foxy chick, a degree more than the average” to sit on a server ready and waiting for any chap with one head, a reliable job and a brain located where it should be, rather than where they often are.
And then somewhere nearby, another profile for the Decent Employers of this world, which would read something along the lines of “Dedicated, conscientious, imaginative, Big Picture thinker with an eye for details”.
Now that would be a service worth paying for. Perhaps Mr Gates could set to it?
