Even a few years ago, no one was especially worried about the way that their personal name was being used on the Internet. While it may have been amusing to look up a name on Google or another major search engine, the actual results did not seem to matter very much. Today, a number of high-profile cases have changed all that. There are media reports, seemingly every month, about who are losing job opportunities because of their personal name search engine results. Some people’s reputations and professional lives are in peril or even ruined by a bad search engine result for their own names.

If you want to be a schoolteacher for example, but your name happens to be the name of a popular adult film star, you will have a difficult time finding employment in your field. Today, employers are running careful background checks – or at least basic Internet checks — in order to find out what sort of employees they are hiring. Unfortunately, some employers are running very casual checks and are not considering the possibility of mistaken identities.

There are many ways that a bad personal name results search online can hurt you and your career:

1. Mistaken identity. Unless your name is very unusual, there are probably at least a few people in the country with the same name as you. If your online alter egos are professional, upstanding citizens, that may be fine. However, what happens when someone with your exact name has a criminal record or appears on sex offender databases? Knowing who else has your personal name and what sort of search results your personal name generates can help you create a reputation strategy. For example, you might want to start using a slightly altered name — such as your full name with a middle initial — to separate yourself from some unsavory characters with similar names online.
2. Past mistakes. It is possible that even though you are now a professional and mature person, at one point you made some mistakes. The media have been filled with reports of employees getting fired for their MySpace pages or for websites that they created years ago. Some media outlets had even reported on potential job candidates who were not chosen because of their social networking pages. You may not realize it, but the way that your personal name is associated with some private social networking sites may affect your ability to land a job, apartments, or volunteer positions. Anyone can easily look up your name online, and if what they seems to suggest a wild past, you may be missing some pretty exciting opportunities in life. Creating a slightly off-color MySpace page or website a few years ago may still hurt you, even if the actual page is long gone.
3. Personal gossip. Sometimes, the things that we say online in blogs, forums, or social networking sites can give us a bad reputation online and in the real world. Consider all the casual comments that you make in chat rooms, discussion groups, and other forums. Would you be happy if your best friend, significant other, or mother saw those comments? Just about anyone can easily Google your name. If that name is associated with less than savory images or comments, people you care about maybe worried and others around you may be gossiping.

The way that your personal name appears on search engine rankings is your new business card, résumé, and handshake rolled into one. While in the past, people had to run a background check to find out all about you, today anyone with even a little bit of computer savvy can easily find out all about you online with just a few clicks of a mouse. If search engine results for your personal name are not good, it could be costing you that great apartment, promotion, new job, or even a volunteer position. If your personal name results in bad Internet search results, you need to take action. Here are few concrete things you can do to start turning the situation around today:

1. Register your name on social media sites such as Linkedin, Myspace, Facebook, Naymz, Squidoo, Digg and others. Start putting together positive, professional web pages for your name. This will take a bit of time, but it is free and will help ensure that search engine results for your name are generally positive and something you can be proud of. Having pages on social media sites will also push negative search engine results lower on search engine rankings. That way, anyone searching for your name online will see positive pages you created first.
2. Buy your own name domains for com, .net, and .org. For example, if your name is Jane Doe, buy janedoe.com, janedoe.net, and janedoe.org. If someone has already registered the domain, buy the closest domain name you can to your name. Use these sites to create a few pages about yourself. Generally, these will appear at the very top of search engine rankings. That way, if less-than-savory search engine results are associated with your name, at least someone looking for your name will find you — in a positive light — first.
3. Try writing some articles about something that you know. You can volunteer these articles to blog owners, newsletter owners, or even upload them to article directories. This is a great way to ensure that search engine search results for your name lead to positive, informative pages rather than something offensive. Just make sure that when your article appears, at the end of the article you have a byline and some links to your web pages or social networking pages.
4. Start using your real name on professional forums. Make positive comments, and have a signature line that links back to your web pages and social networking sites.
5. On all your web pages, use your actual name in the title tag. This helps ensure that your pages are search engine optimized. Another trick is to use a proper alt text and a caption with any pictures of yourself that you upload. It’s another free and simple way to ensure that your name is search engine optimized.
6. If you have a very common name, make sure that you use keywords to associate a location with your name. For example, you may want to link Joe Smith with Kansas or Albany, NY. Anyone Googling your name — such as an employer — may look for you by using geographical location as well as your name.
7. Try not to worry too much. If you do notice that search engine results lead to someone else who is less than savory, find ways to differentiate yourself from that person, or explain to potential employers that if they are running a background check, you have a an alter ego online. Or, provide your own URLs on your résumé so that employers don’t have to go sneaking through the Internet to find you.
8. If your online reputation is so bad that you are losing opportunities, it’s time to call in the professionals. Sign up with a good reputation management service. Look for professionals who can help you pinpoint the reputation problems and help you resolve them quickly.