Have you heard all the cautionary comments that say be careful on social networking sites, what you post, what information you give out, and what pictures that may show up about you. Now there is a site that you can go to which will give the information about the people who “Google” you like maybe after a date, a client, or even a job interview. The online reputation manager “BrandYourself” can help you find out who might be searching for your name as well as make sure that your information is top notch when you are being “Googled.”
With the startup, individuals are able to control “Google” results for specific names through SEO as a new feature was launched that will find “BrandYourself” profiles on the people and where they are located.
“BrandYourself” created their own database of businesses that have publicly accessible IP addresses that allows for the creation of the feature. They use that information to match IP addresses of profiles with companies that may own that address. Most people access “Brand Yourself” profiles through “Google” but it will also to utilize the feature if visitors access a user’s profile from another search engine or site.
The application isn’t without issues. It is convenient to be able to track IP addresses for large companies, but lots of smaller businesses won’t be listed in the directory. The feature was meant for “BrandYourself” to keep users engaged, but it offers users a way to see who might be looking them up and prompts them to modify their profile to collect that information and ensure the best unilateral info is out there for them
Whether you know it, or whether you like it, you’re being Googled and making sure good information is there for people to see about you is controlled by “BrandYourself.” The free product is an easy to use app that allows users to optimize up to three links they want to be ranked in search positions for their names. Since outbound and inbound linking factors is one way that Google ranks pages, creating a profile that can link to all of a person’s other profiles is a beneficial asset.
The feature was released in March. Since that time Ambron has signed on more than 25,000 members with at least 80 percent of them setting up profiles. Some 1000 users have already upgraded to a premium product for ten dollars per month, which offers the flexibility to optimize without link limits.
There are other similar sites available like “Ziggs” and “Naymz” that also track geographic locations of visitor profiles. Unlike “BrandYourself,” the one thing they don’t provide is the names of the organizations. Career networking sites like “LinkedIn”
reveal who visited your profile as well as their work history. Ambron makes a comparison to “LinkedIn” and “MyLife” in that they show the information between internal users to the application, but “BrandYourself” is applicable to the entire web.
