I don’t know if you have ever searched your name on a popular search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN. Well, you should do. Firstly, it is interesting to see what you can find about yourself. You will remember your various forum postings, comments on blogs, your pics on Flickr and much more.
Though if you don’t have a very uncommon name you will also find stuff about other people sharing the same name with you. I guess in some cases you won’t be too happy if other people confused you with the lunatic dancing naked in the streets of London. Also keep in mind that many human resources directors already query for potential candidates on the web.
Search engines cannot make the distinction between people so you have to find a way to tell other people who you are. One way to do so is registering an account with ClaimID. I have discovered this service yesterday because their new blog entry appeared on Megite.
So what is the benefit of a ClaimID account? You have a page with all the links that somehow relate to you: your website and blog, user profiles on various social networks, articles you have written or articles about you. Just everything you can find. It is pretty easy to add links to the page because ClaimID provide a handy bookmarklet. You are able to group the links, tag them and describe them. So if you can add any information about yourself you can also create a group with information that is not about you. Just add links you find about your namesake and visitors to your page can quickly see who is who. Just see my profile, though it is not complete in any way.
ClaimID support OpenID which is a distributed identity system. With OpenID you can sign in to any service which supports it, e.g. Technorati. There is a great blog entry by the ClaimID folks about it. Recommended. Also they support MicroID verification which works with sites like del.icio.us and Last.FM. However my blog as well as my Last FM profile haven’t been verified yet.
Anyway, this is a great service. And don’t forget to add your profile to your blog or website via a batch, plugin or widget.
Tags: Google, Last FM, London, search engine, Search engines, Social Networks, Yahoo
