Embarrassing moments live forever online. But learn to work with the Web, not against it, and you could reshape your cyberhistory.
IN the winter of 1996, back when I was a brunette who wore sensible shoes, a photographer snapped my picture during a rehearsal for a college musical. The production mattered; eating and sleeping did not. The resulting portrait showed a pasty, gaunt girl being swallowed by a XXX-large T-shirt.
The only thing more unfortunate than the photo is that nearly a decade after it was taken - a decade in which I became a blonde and graduated to stilettos - it is still the definitive image of me on the World Wide Web, the one that pops up every time my name is entered in a Google search. It even has the dubious distinction of being in the top 10 hits in a list of several hundred, most of them articles I have written.
The photo caption says that as the show's director, I was working "behind the scenes." I beg to differ. I am center stage in cyberspace. Never mind that the photograph accompanies an article about my theatrical achievements. If a prospective date were to encounter the virtual me before the flesh-and-blood me, he would not be moved to schedule aperitifs.
But if misery loves company, then there is solace in knowing that many people bristle at the mere thought of being Googled because of the photographs, news clippings or blog entries that they feel do not reflect who they really are. Such is the plight of the Google-ee.
Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products for Google, said that people call and e-mail the company regularly to request that links to their names be removed, though she would not estimate how many. Web masters who want to remove their own content from cyberspace are directed to Google, where they can learn how. But people like me, who do not own the offending material, must contact a Web master directly.
"We have no way of identifying it's you," Ms. Mayer said. "We can't just take down a Web master's content based on a request we can't authenticate."
Requests to wipe the cyberslate clean generally stem from a desire to delete the past. After all, how do you reinvent yourself when the old you is but a mouse click away?
The answer, as savvy Web users have figured out, is to electronically shape and edit your online self. But first, you must give up the quest to erase all unflattering content. It is almost impossible.
"The Web is the worst place to try to take control of something," said Larry Weber, the chief executive of W2 Group Inc., a marketing services company that builds and manages online identities and brands for businesses. "You'll drive yourself crazy trying to get things deleted."
That's because Web sites may publish what they choose as long as it's not libelous or otherwise a violation of law. John Palfrey, the executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, said that as a general rule, "if it's damaging but it's accurate, it's not actionable."
"What if it's extraordinarily ugly?" I asked.
"Extraordinarily ugly probably doesn't get it there," he said, adding that "with information that's put on the Internet, you pretty much have to assume it will be around forever."
TRYING to prove that information is false can be a costly and lengthy process. Last week Cecilia Barnes, who lives in Portland, Ore., filed suit against Yahoo for $3 million, charging that the company had not removed nude photographs of her from the Web, as it had promised it would.
Ms. Barnes's suit claims that an ex-boyfriend posted the pictures, her e-mail address and her work phone number without permission.
Yahoo did not return a call seeking comment about the lawsuit.
Even when online information is not an invasion of privacy, it can still be irritating. (The public relations and communications office at my alma mater said it was willing to consider removing my photograph if it was causing me emotional distress or harm, but not if it was causing me to cringe.)
Wendy Barrie-Wilson, an actress who has performed in more than 90 theater productions, played the role of Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie" to much acclaim at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey in 2003. Variety raved.
"She is one of the finest Amanda Wingfields in memory," Robert L. Daniels wrote, "and can proudly take her place alongside the memorable Amandas in this critic's experience: Helen Hayes, Jessica Tandy, Julie Harris and Maureen Stapleton."
But that glowing review is buried among the links in a Google search of Ms. Barrie-Wilson's name; a less favorable one calling her interpretation of the character "unusually harsh and shrill" from a theater Web site is not.
"The big quote in Variety that was stupendous?" Ms. Barrie-Wilson said. "You've got to search for that."
RATHER than trying to have uncharitable comments and images removed from the Web, Mr. Weber said, people should go with the flow of the Internet. "Go in and be part of the community," he said, "and share and be transparent and be open."
Gentry L. Akens II, a television and film producer in Orlando, Fla., is attempting to do just that, after being baffled by the results of a Google search of his name. "Some of the things that I want to pop up, I don't find," Mr. Akens said.
These include his work as a production designer and an art director for the Nickelodeon television shows "Gullah Gullah Island" and "Taina," and for "The Mickey Mouse Club."
"You have to know to go to Nickelodeon to find that I've been involved in those things," Mr. Akens said.
He recently took matters into his own hands by paying to be part of the Internet Movie Database, a listing of film and television credits.
"I paid to be a part of that service," he said, "in hopes that those things would pop up more frequently."
Two days after he posted his credentials on the site, his listing was beginning to appear among the first links to his name. He is also setting up his own Web site.
Mr. Akens has the right idea, experts say. The most effective way to define and control your digital persona is to start a blog or put up a home page.
"Web logs come up very high in a Google search," Mr. Palfrey of Harvard said. "By creating a personal Web page, particularly one that has lots of links to lots of sources, you can create a gateway to your online identity."
Anil Dash, who describes himself on Anildash.com as "a writer/geek/New Yorker living in San Francisco," has been blogging since the 90's and has built a virtual identity that he says accurately reflects who he is.
"The Internet is a very good analogy to a company," Mr. Dash said. "There is always going to be somebody complaining. At least the first voice they hear is yours."
Last year Mr. Dash participated in a challenge in which competitors attempted to get their Web site to be the first Google result for the made-up phrase "Nigritude Ultramarine." Mr. Dash won the second round by posting a request on his popular blog asking readers to link from their own sites to his using the phrase.
An attempt to influence the rank of a site returned by a Google search is known as Google Washing or Google Bombing. Referring to the process as "gaming Google," Mr. Palfrey explained that Google's dominance as a search engine was largely due to a technology called PageRank, which he called the company's "special sauce."
"The idea is that they have deduced, based on an algorithm, which are the most authoritative sources," Mr. Palfrey said. "They give each page a rank from zero to 10. The higher your PageRank, the more your site comes up."
As Google explains further on its site, "Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.' "
For example, Google had a PageRank of 10 in a recent check; Ilovebassfishing.com had a zero.
"The trick," Mr. Palfrey said, "is if you can get lots of people that have a great PageRank to link to you, you're going to be driven up very high."
THEREFORE, the secret to burying unflattering Web details about yourself is to create a preferred version of the facts on a home page or a blog of your own, then devise a strategy to get high-ranking Web sites to link to you. Many people assume that a Google ranking has something to do with Web traffic, but that is incorrect, as is the notion that the more links a site has, the higher its PageRank.
A PageRank can be high even if a Web site is linked to only once, Ms. Mayer of Google said, provided that the one link is itself a highly ranked page. Colleges, universities and government Web sites usually have high PageRanks because Google considers them authoritative, which explains why the Web site of my alma mater with the unflattering photo trumps numerous other links.
I have never had the urge to blog. But in the interest of research, I recently created two bare-bones blogs and a Web site to see what effect they would have on a search of my name.
I created the blogs through two services, Blogger and TypePad, which offer step-by-step instructions. It took me less than 10 minutes (though I have not yet added any personal musings).
Domain names for a personal Web site can be purchased from a variety of sources. I chose Yahoo, although I still need a Web hosting package to house multiple links and graphics.
Right now neither my Web site nor my blogs appear on a Google search of my name; the company says these take time to get ranked. So not only do I have an unflattering photo floating around the Net, but on a scale of zero to 10, I am a zero.
It turns out that Google's crawler - the software that roams the Web and ceaselessly indexes its contents - has yet to discover my sites. Ms. Mayer said I could speed things up by visiting the Submitting Your Site link on Google and entering an Internet address. A crawler, like a door-to-door salesman, would visit my site within two to three weeks. In the meantime, I was encouraged to link to other sites and have them link back to me.
Creating content has taken up so much of my time that I no longer have time to worry about that old photograph. It was another time and another place, and when I look at that photo, I think back on that life - and it was first rate.
I have learned that the upside to being a Google-ee is that one becomes a more sensitive Googler. I now feel guilty about the time I exchanged numbers with a tall, wavy-haired stranger but did not return his calls after a Google search revealed he had a penchant for competitive eating. From here on out, I will live by a new creed: Google unto others as you would have them Google unto you.
From The NewYork Times (registration required)
IN the winter of 1996, back when I was a brunette who wore sensible shoes, a photographer snapped my picture during a rehearsal for a college musical. The production mattered; eating and sleeping did not. The resulting portrait showed a pasty, gaunt girl being swallowed by a XXX-large T-shirt.
The only thing more unfortunate than the photo is that nearly a decade after it was taken - a decade in which I became a blonde and graduated to stilettos - it is still the definitive image of me on the World Wide Web, the one that pops up every time my name is entered in a Google search. It even has the dubious distinction of being in the top 10 hits in a list of several hundred, most of them articles I have written.
The photo caption says that as the show's director, I was working "behind the scenes." I beg to differ. I am center stage in cyberspace. Never mind that the photograph accompanies an article about my theatrical achievements. If a prospective date were to encounter the virtual me before the flesh-and-blood me, he would not be moved to schedule aperitifs.
But if misery loves company, then there is solace in knowing that many people bristle at the mere thought of being Googled because of the photographs, news clippings or blog entries that they feel do not reflect who they really are. Such is the plight of the Google-ee.
Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products for Google, said that people call and e-mail the company regularly to request that links to their names be removed, though she would not estimate how many. Web masters who want to remove their own content from cyberspace are directed to Google, where they can learn how. But people like me, who do not own the offending material, must contact a Web master directly.
"We have no way of identifying it's you," Ms. Mayer said. "We can't just take down a Web master's content based on a request we can't authenticate."
Requests to wipe the cyberslate clean generally stem from a desire to delete the past. After all, how do you reinvent yourself when the old you is but a mouse click away?
The answer, as savvy Web users have figured out, is to electronically shape and edit your online self. But first, you must give up the quest to erase all unflattering content. It is almost impossible.
"The Web is the worst place to try to take control of something," said Larry Weber, the chief executive of W2 Group Inc., a marketing services company that builds and manages online identities and brands for businesses. "You'll drive yourself crazy trying to get things deleted."
That's because Web sites may publish what they choose as long as it's not libelous or otherwise a violation of law. John Palfrey, the executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, said that as a general rule, "if it's damaging but it's accurate, it's not actionable."
"What if it's extraordinarily ugly?" I asked.
"Extraordinarily ugly probably doesn't get it there," he said, adding that "with information that's put on the Internet, you pretty much have to assume it will be around forever."
TRYING to prove that information is false can be a costly and lengthy process. Last week Cecilia Barnes, who lives in Portland, Ore., filed suit against Yahoo for $3 million, charging that the company had not removed nude photographs of her from the Web, as it had promised it would.
Ms. Barnes's suit claims that an ex-boyfriend posted the pictures, her e-mail address and her work phone number without permission.
Yahoo did not return a call seeking comment about the lawsuit.
Even when online information is not an invasion of privacy, it can still be irritating. (The public relations and communications office at my alma mater said it was willing to consider removing my photograph if it was causing me emotional distress or harm, but not if it was causing me to cringe.)
Wendy Barrie-Wilson, an actress who has performed in more than 90 theater productions, played the role of Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie" to much acclaim at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey in 2003. Variety raved.
"She is one of the finest Amanda Wingfields in memory," Robert L. Daniels wrote, "and can proudly take her place alongside the memorable Amandas in this critic's experience: Helen Hayes, Jessica Tandy, Julie Harris and Maureen Stapleton."
But that glowing review is buried among the links in a Google search of Ms. Barrie-Wilson's name; a less favorable one calling her interpretation of the character "unusually harsh and shrill" from a theater Web site is not.
"The big quote in Variety that was stupendous?" Ms. Barrie-Wilson said. "You've got to search for that."
RATHER than trying to have uncharitable comments and images removed from the Web, Mr. Weber said, people should go with the flow of the Internet. "Go in and be part of the community," he said, "and share and be transparent and be open."
Gentry L. Akens II, a television and film producer in Orlando, Fla., is attempting to do just that, after being baffled by the results of a Google search of his name. "Some of the things that I want to pop up, I don't find," Mr. Akens said.
These include his work as a production designer and an art director for the Nickelodeon television shows "Gullah Gullah Island" and "Taina," and for "The Mickey Mouse Club."
"You have to know to go to Nickelodeon to find that I've been involved in those things," Mr. Akens said.
He recently took matters into his own hands by paying to be part of the Internet Movie Database, a listing of film and television credits.
"I paid to be a part of that service," he said, "in hopes that those things would pop up more frequently."
Two days after he posted his credentials on the site, his listing was beginning to appear among the first links to his name. He is also setting up his own Web site.
Mr. Akens has the right idea, experts say. The most effective way to define and control your digital persona is to start a blog or put up a home page.
"Web logs come up very high in a Google search," Mr. Palfrey of Harvard said. "By creating a personal Web page, particularly one that has lots of links to lots of sources, you can create a gateway to your online identity."
Anil Dash, who describes himself on Anildash.com as "a writer/geek/New Yorker living in San Francisco," has been blogging since the 90's and has built a virtual identity that he says accurately reflects who he is.
"The Internet is a very good analogy to a company," Mr. Dash said. "There is always going to be somebody complaining. At least the first voice they hear is yours."
Last year Mr. Dash participated in a challenge in which competitors attempted to get their Web site to be the first Google result for the made-up phrase "Nigritude Ultramarine." Mr. Dash won the second round by posting a request on his popular blog asking readers to link from their own sites to his using the phrase.
An attempt to influence the rank of a site returned by a Google search is known as Google Washing or Google Bombing. Referring to the process as "gaming Google," Mr. Palfrey explained that Google's dominance as a search engine was largely due to a technology called PageRank, which he called the company's "special sauce."
"The idea is that they have deduced, based on an algorithm, which are the most authoritative sources," Mr. Palfrey said. "They give each page a rank from zero to 10. The higher your PageRank, the more your site comes up."
As Google explains further on its site, "Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.' "
For example, Google had a PageRank of 10 in a recent check; Ilovebassfishing.com had a zero.
"The trick," Mr. Palfrey said, "is if you can get lots of people that have a great PageRank to link to you, you're going to be driven up very high."
THEREFORE, the secret to burying unflattering Web details about yourself is to create a preferred version of the facts on a home page or a blog of your own, then devise a strategy to get high-ranking Web sites to link to you. Many people assume that a Google ranking has something to do with Web traffic, but that is incorrect, as is the notion that the more links a site has, the higher its PageRank.
A PageRank can be high even if a Web site is linked to only once, Ms. Mayer of Google said, provided that the one link is itself a highly ranked page. Colleges, universities and government Web sites usually have high PageRanks because Google considers them authoritative, which explains why the Web site of my alma mater with the unflattering photo trumps numerous other links.
I have never had the urge to blog. But in the interest of research, I recently created two bare-bones blogs and a Web site to see what effect they would have on a search of my name.
I created the blogs through two services, Blogger and TypePad, which offer step-by-step instructions. It took me less than 10 minutes (though I have not yet added any personal musings).
Domain names for a personal Web site can be purchased from a variety of sources. I chose Yahoo, although I still need a Web hosting package to house multiple links and graphics.
Right now neither my Web site nor my blogs appear on a Google search of my name; the company says these take time to get ranked. So not only do I have an unflattering photo floating around the Net, but on a scale of zero to 10, I am a zero.
It turns out that Google's crawler - the software that roams the Web and ceaselessly indexes its contents - has yet to discover my sites. Ms. Mayer said I could speed things up by visiting the Submitting Your Site link on Google and entering an Internet address. A crawler, like a door-to-door salesman, would visit my site within two to three weeks. In the meantime, I was encouraged to link to other sites and have them link back to me.
Creating content has taken up so much of my time that I no longer have time to worry about that old photograph. It was another time and another place, and when I look at that photo, I think back on that life - and it was first rate.
I have learned that the upside to being a Google-ee is that one becomes a more sensitive Googler. I now feel guilty about the time I exchanged numbers with a tall, wavy-haired stranger but did not return his calls after a Google search revealed he had a penchant for competitive eating. From here on out, I will live by a new creed: Google unto others as you would have them Google unto you.
From The NewYork Times (registration required)