Class Discussion

A great deal of our class discussion was focused on Search Engine Optimization, and we even experimented with the concept with the stiuqxela experiment. We also discussed vanity searches and person as a brand. Earlier in the semester after discussing vanity searches, I decided to do a vanity search. In the results, I could hardly find my blog as it appeared very late in the search results. I was behind all sorts of birth and death records from hundreds of years ago and even a series of novels with a main character who shares my name. After discussing search engine optimization, I decided I would attempt to optimize my blog to see if I could boost my results. I added a number of links to template of my blog including teammates blogs, class blog, wikipedia articles, and required reading blogs. Also in the template I included a section entitled "Anne Wylde's Blog" which described the purpose of the blog. The only other change I made was posting more. I just did another vanity Google search to find this blog as the top result: Google Search Results

John Battelle's Searchblog has a link to an interesting article, "Judges Say Google Background Checks are OK", about a ruling stating that background checks using Google are legal. This article demonstrates the necessity of performing a vanity search in order to determine what others may be deducing about you from the web. According to this ruing, it is legal for an employer to use information from the web for hiring/firing decisions.