# How can I get new stuff to appear when people Google my name?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-get-new-stuff-to-appear-when-people-google-my-name/212427>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 10, 2003, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-get-new-stuff-to-appear-when-people-google-my-name/212427 "2003-11-10T17:26:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![JohnBarleycorn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@JohnBarleycorn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBarleycorn)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-get-new-stuff-to-appear-when-people-google-my-name/212427/1 "2003-11-10T17:26:17Z")

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Sometimes friends tell me they’ve googled my name and only found an old news item about me suing a fastfood chain. That was settled out of court years ago.

Must I put up a website and hope it gets found by google?  
Or can I just post things in my own name somewhere? Where, exactly?

When I google other people they are often in odd old websites like searching for lost relatives or selling things online, but the sites I run into are usually dormant, so I can’t just post and expect to see my name appear.

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**Author:** ![aeropl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f05b48/32.png) [@aeropl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aeropl)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-get-new-stuff-to-appear-when-people-google-my-name/212427/2 "2003-11-10T18:01:09Z")

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Make a homepage or something and include your name in the page a few times. Then click here: [Add URL to Google](http://www.google.com/addurl.html) and add the site to google. It probably won’t be the first result though unless it becomes popular, because of the way google ranks search results.

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**Author:** ![Trigonal\_Planar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/0ea827/32.png) [@Trigonal\_Planar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trigonal_Planar)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-get-new-stuff-to-appear-when-people-google-my-name/212427/3 "2003-11-10T19:53:05Z")

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Right.

A few years ago I was employed to increase the page ranking for a particular company. I doubt the tricks back then still work now.

Anyway, yes, make a webpage and mention your name on it several times. But don’t just list your name; actually try to include it in a reasonable context (this will increase your hits from people searching on other terms). This in turn will increase your Google popularity.

Short of paying off search sites, its much harder these days to improve ranking.

Anyone know if meta tags still hold any value?