How is your Google-print ?

When I meet somebody new at work, I often google them to get a feel for their "google-print" (I think I just made this term up!), their online presence.

How well they "score" depends on a lot of things. Having a common name obviously doesn't help. Posting on mailing lists makes a big difference. Sharing a name with somebody famous is not going help your cause. People involved in IT have a bit of advantage because they will often post to mailing-lists/news groups.

Being a bit vain, I occasionally google my self to see how I'm scoring. I used to be about more than 70% of the first 3 pages, but this has gone down recently. I suspect Google has tweaked their algorithms for removing duplicate identities from these sorts of searches.

So, I'm possibly doing some contract work with somebody who, according to the company website, seems to have a really impressive CV. So I google him and don't come up with much at all. Is it because he has a common name (not really) or is it because he doesn't "get out" on the 'net much ?

Proceed with caution I suspect !