It goes without saying that when you are being considered for a job, you will be googled, and not just for a job. Potential collaborators, conference organizers, journalists looking for someone who knows your subject, students deciding whether to take your class will google you, and so will people considering inviting you to speak, or to review a manuscript, join a project, or apply for a position.

You need to know what they are seeing. As uncomfortable as it is, you can’t manage your public image without knowing what the internet throws up about you, in what order.

So this week’s task is simple: Google yourself and audit what you find.

The best way to do this is to open a private or incognito browser window (because you want to reduce the influence of your own browsing history) and search your full professional name. After that, try the variations someone else might use: your name + university, your name + discipline, your name + research topic, your name + the title of your most important article or book, your name + previous institution, if relevant.

Now look at the first two or three pages of results and ask yourself what appears and what doesn’t. Imagine that you know nothing about this person. Based only on the search results, can you tell what they study? Where they work? What they have published? What they are currently working on? How to contact them? If the answer is no, you have work to do. If you play trumpet on the side, and the only thing that comes up are your recent music gigs, that is equally a problem (assuming you’re not a Professor of Trumpet in a Music School, or a professional musician). When you’re searching for a job, the internet needs to showcase you in a professional light.

Academics sometimes resist thinking about their online presence because it sounds suspiciously like “branding.” If that word makes you feel weird, go ahead and call it something else. I don’t care what you call it. Impression management? Because those search results create an impression.

Some common results: Google produces a departmental page that hasn’t been updated since 2019, with a photo of you from 2015; or the first result is a conference program from six years ago. Your institutional profile might list research interests you abandoned during your PhD and your newest publications are nowhere to be seen. Or perhaps some celebrity or athlete or criminal shares your name and dominates the search results, rendering you basically invisible.

What if you have a professional “scandal” in your past? People do. Sometimes it’s an ugly lawsuit with your former institution, or unwelcome coverage in some news outlet (right wing or otherwise). Or you have had a personal tragedy or dramatic event, and news stories about it are the first thing that arises.

None of these situations is catastrophic,  and you obviously can’t entirely control Google, but you can control what information Google has available to find.

And by the way, you CAN control Google to a degree. Try using Google’s in-house “google about you” link. This also includes a mechanism to formally request that they remove a search result. Note though, that this removes the content from Google but not from the original hosting websites.

You can also use sites like DeleteMe and incogni  which help you control what is visible. In addition there are companies like NetReputation and the like that will work with you individually to curate your online presence. I am not linking to these here because I can’t vouch for their security/safety, but they are worth checking out if you are concerned.

For most readers, however, we are just talking garden variety outdated academic info. For you, simply updating the lowest hanging fruit with your current info, photos and pdfs  – plus contact info – is all you need.

Start with the obvious places: your university or departmental profile, your personal academic website, your Google Scholar profile, your ORCID record, and the professional platforms that actually matter in your field. Check the basics – is your affiliation correct? Is your bio current? Are your recent publications listed? Do the links work? Is there a RECENT professional photograph where one is appropriate? Does your description of your research reflect what you do now, rather than what you did when somebody first created the page? Most important: Can someone find an email address or another obvious way to contact you? You’d be shocked how often there isn’t.

(And by the way, if your contact method is LinkedIn, please keep in mind that many people don’t use LinkedIn constantly or as primarily a messaging site (I am one of them). Some of us feel uncomfortable being forced to use LinkedIn contact methods, especially because unlimited messaging requires a premium tier membership. PLEASE use a universally accessible mode like an email, or a contact form that defaults to your main email.)

Also please double check your PDFs. Academics routinely upload a CV to a website and then forget about it for years, so an obsolete CV can remain remarkably easy to find. Search for: “[Your Name]” CV PDF and see what comes up.

Search results may also surface old conference biographies, university announcements, student newspapers, book reviews, abandoned social-media accounts, former institutional profiles, the relics of previous lives and careers, and early grad school achievements, and other digital archaeology. You can’t necessarily control for all of this, but do not panic, the goal is not to erase every trace of your past. Instead, ask whether outdated material is merely old or actively misleading. If an old departmental page says you are still employed there, contact the institution and ask for it to be removed. Request a correction if an old profile contains incorrect information. If an abandoned account is still publicly visible and serves no purpose, consider deleting it or updating it.

Then concentrate your effort on strengthening the accurate material you can control. Good current information tends to become more visible when it is consistent, useful, linked, and maintained.

Click the Images tab too.  You need a photograph that looks recognizably like you and is appropriate for professional use. Conference organizers and media outlets frequently search for photographs of speakers and experts online rather than seeking you out directly to ask for one. One clear, recent, high-resolution professional image on your institutional page or personal website is worth considerably more than twelve mysterious thumbnails from conferences held in badly lit hotel basements.

If you have a personal website, give it the ten-second test – that is, if a stranger lands on the homepage can they determine within ten seconds basic information like who you are, what you study and where you are based, and AGAIN: HOW TO CONTACT YOU. If not, simplify. A strong basic academic site can be remarkably boring while still effective: name, position, research areas, short biography, publications, current projects, teaching where relevant, CV, contact information. This is better than being clever and whizzy but opaque.

Auditing your online presence does not mean you must become a content creator. You do not have to post daily or to build a “personal brand” across six social media platforms. You certainly do not need another exhausting professional obligation. For many academics, a well-maintained institutional profile, Google Scholar page, ORCID record, and simple personal website are more valuable than a busy (or worse, neglected) account on some social media platform you secretly hate.

So this week, set aside 30 minutes. Google your name in an incognito window and search several professional variations. Look through the first few pages of results and check image results. Find any publicly accessible versions of your CV.

Then make two columns: ‘What I want people to find’ and ‘What people currently find.’ Compare them, and choose the three highest-impact discrepancies and fix what you can. This could be an update to your institutional bio, or replacing the ancient CV on your website. You can add your newest publications to Google Scholar. And, do take this opportunity to finally create a simple webpage that clearly states what your research and/or wider post-ac profile is about.

The objective is that when someone searches for you professionally, they quickly find the right person, doing the right work, with accurate information about how to engage with you. And by “right” I of course mean the “you” that represents your current career goals, so if you’re firmly ensconced in academic, then all these links can stay academic. But if you’re in a (more or less urgent) transition, then be sure that you have created a website that showcases future, non-academic you, and link to that website as you participate in your online life (leaving comments on others’ blogs or Substack pieces, for example), and bit by bit, that new identity will come forward, and be the first thing people see.