What can you do when the infamous deeds of someone else with your name are all over search engines?
When I was born there were two other Judith Mohns very nearby -- my mother and my favorite aunt. The "Judy, Judy, Judi" made for regular Cary Grant imitations at family events, but if there was yet another Judith Mohn anywhere else in the world, I knew nothing about her.
Judith is not a Jessica or a Jennifer of a name, it pretty much died off with Ms. Garland. There were never other Judys in my school classes or subsequent offices.
Search engines were just coming into play when I became Judith Griggs 14 years ago, introducing me to name twins worldwide. Until recently they were/are an impressive lot. There is a published geologist, a lawyer/Formula One executive in Austrialia, a brilliant recording artist and a few women seriously involved in their communities. In the democracy of the web, I consistently topped them on all search engines-- not by merit but volume. I blogged. I was quoted in newspapers regularly as a function of my job. I bought the url judigriggs.com on the advice of a literary agent. There was no meritocracy involved. I "owned" our name online.
The more accomplished Judith Griggs' may not have seen in that way, but I thought the system was quite equitable.
Then came the great "Judith Griggs" fiasco of 2010 . A heretoforth "deep pager" - someone with our name who never previously showed up in the top five pages of results -- this Judith Griggs was the editor of an obscure cooking magazine when she ignored copyright law and stole a protected recipe without permission. When caught she did not claim ignorance or apologize -- with no facts remotely in her favor, she argued simply that she was right. The incident created a tremendous amount of online debate and coverage culiminating with the title 2010 Media Error of the Year.
Thirty years in media and communications and there is my name forever linked to that auspicious award cite. The timing, simultaneous with my opening of my own business, could not have been worse. For all I know, my more accomplished name twins may well assume that Judith Griggs is me getting my rightful comeuppance. But it's that other JG who has landed our shared moniker in the Urban Dictionary as a synonym for incompetance and arrogance.
Although search engine algorithms are updated regularly and become more sophisticated with each generation, the only way to beat a prevalent usage is to be more prevalent. Companies have sprung up promising to clean your name online (with radio commercials sounding much like those who previously promised to clean your credit) and they have taken for themselves the mantle of "reputation management." Until this time "reputation management" was a specialized practice of public relations, the type which I practice. But they have national ad budgets and I have no ownership of a business classification that started appearing in textbooks in the 1960s. To their credit, they have recently amended their tag line to "online reputation management."
So what do you do when you have a notorious identity twin and do not wish to hire such a company? Take care of your own online presence first. Stake your claim to who you actually are by getting as much information about yourself out there as possible. Use the "Google juice" strength of Linked In , Google Profiles and similar well-trafficked sites to define clearly who you are and what you do. Update any old information you may have posted years ago.
Althought the official term for it is "egosurfing" - it is not egomanical to Google yourself. If your online identity matters to your business practice, it is necessary preventative care.
Make sure information purporting to be actually about you is correct. If misinformation appears on legimate sites, contact them directly with a request for correction.
If the information is on an aggregator site, like many that sell "public information" on people or provide "business directories," there are rarely human beings involved in gathering and posting the information. They mechanically scrape other sites for names and related information and often draw erroneous conclusions. They are notorious for getting it wrong and provide no recourse for correction. Most sophisticated web consumers see the sites for what they are and lend no credence to the eight husbands and 42 jobs they have linked me to over the last few years.
With more consumers daily qualifying their business decisions online, it's important to monitor and mend what's out there -- and push appropriate information forward every chance you get.
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