All interesting stories, at least on my campus, start out “So I was Googling myself..”, and this news snippet is no exception. So I was Googling myself today and noticed that I am now the second result (at least in the US) for a “paul” search on Google.com, passing up Paul McCartney. I think that’s the highest I’ll be able to go considering the first spot is a Wikipedia hit for Paul the Apostle. I don’t know how long it will stay like this and I’m sure the ranking will fluctuate from time to time.
On a related note, I contacted the owner of paul.com last week. I won’t be able to afford that domain for a very long time. Also, I ended up hiring Mike Rohde last week to design a logo for this site and some personal branding. It’s about time I got some real business cards too. Although, my business cards will never be as great as Matt Mullenweg‘s (founder of WordPress).
For the rest of this month and the first week of May, posting around here might be sporadic at best as finals near and projects reach their deadline. I was at the College of Computing with one of my computer science groups for about 40 hours last week.. those vending machines made a small fortune off of me.
Wow, that’s impressive man, I can only hope someday I make the first page for Andrew.
That’s pretty good, even better than Paul Allen. I’m only #9 for Kelsey.
I think a “cooler” biz card would be simply this:
Google “Matt”
My name works (“Steffan Williams”) if you go to Google and do a “I’m feeling lucky…” search.
But then, how many Steffan Williams’s's’s can there be? Especially since my name is Welsh and it’s a fairly small country. ;)
Granted, no where near as cool as just googling your first name though, is it? :P
Good for you! Hehe.
woo… that’s got to be a big rush for the ego. If you beat Paul the apostle, that would be weird… link bomb campaign anyone? Just kidding.
Apparently owning a .ca domain does wonders for ranking on the Canadian portal of Google (google.ca that is). 2nd place! Right after Tony Awards (this one will be tough), but beating Tony Blair’s Wikipedia page. Score!
(google.com pushes me back to ~14th though)
I googled ‘paul’- and got you as 5th. Don’t they adjust your searches according to your previous habits?
On logging out, you jump to fourth.
@titanium_geek: You are referring to personalized search, which is why I was logged out when I took that screenshot. Also, it depends on location – are you in the UK? You might be hitting different servers that way.
As it happens, I contacted the owner of adamwilcox.co.uk. He didn’t want to sell either, although he hasn’t updated his site in four years… Doesn’t it make you sick?
That’s really cool. I would like to get to the first page for “gunnar” but as it stands now I’m #24. Which is ok considering the amount of Gunnar’s in the world. I’m #1 for my full name though on google.com but then again there are a lot less Gunnar Hafdal’s in the world and as far as I know only 2 of them have websites and on google.dk he’s #1
Paul – I really love my moo cards – they’re great for this kind of thing and they turned out excellently.
Congrats buddy! That’s not bad. I can only dream of such exposure, but I sure am willing to try!
Congrats, pal. I’ve moved around #1-3 for ‘devin’ for a while now. I stiff competition: the devin.com owner and a porn star.
Nice work on beating McCartney. ;)
So, you’re only slightly less popular that an Apostle of Christ? Niiiiice. Out of curiosity I just googled “Ben” and I came up #10. w00t!
Well, I’m #2 for “Paul Johns”… when I’m logged in. :(
Okay, I have a ways to go.
It took me 2 years to get this domain. Some dude had it the whole time with a coming soon animated GIF. One day he either died, or just forgot to re-up on the domain payment and I swooped in like a vulture and registered it.
In your face other Paul Johns!
Impressive!
I’m still on page 2 for “joshua”
I obviously own Google with “blankenship” though, so it sort of balances out. (And my business cards do simply say “google blankenship”
It’s an impressive achievement, but doesn’t it make you reflect on the (waning?) quality of Google’s algorithms? I mean, are you seriously the second most interesting Paul on the planet?
Paul, Aussie servers. :) It was pretty funny when our youth group page (with some funny comment about our youth pastor) turned up first in a search for his full name, before his site even! :)
I’m going to have a really hard time with my first name, and I’m still working on my last name…
Your campus is full of nerds.
I’m only 7th for Google.com, for PacoRabanne (without spaces). :(
you are number 3 now.
Hey Paul,
You’re no. 3 here. On both Google.com and Google.co.in (India). That’s still very cool, in my opinion. My site is also the third result on both of those for “smaran”. The funny thing is, a friend of mine in the UK says I’m no. 2 on Google.com. Confusing.
hey paul…man. I really wish I could have many Feedburner readers as you…right now its only wishful thinking.
I was snooping through your source, looking for how you have your headers in the markup. I’m amazed that:
1. You don’t have any h1 element
2. You have the article title as h3, while the menu items are h2′s (this seems backwards.
So much for SEO! Any reason why you’ve made these decisions, or was this not given much thought?
@Andrew – this theme is based on a very hacked up K2 and I never got around to swapping out the h3 tags. =)
Well I beat you, I’m at the top of the rankings for Astorg.
Astorg is very popular, in first names…
Hey Paul,
I’m #6 for Erica — working on being #1 soon ;) Tara is #1 now, and so is Robert Scoble. It’s like the new Geek Chic to be the #1 for your first name :)
Cheers,
-E
The world has spoken. Paul Stamatiou > Paul McCartney. Soon, Stammy will rule the world?
Wow, with a PR6 and 11k backlinks, that’s pretty good Paul. How long have you had a site/blog up at paulstamatiou.com? Being in the Technorati top 100 probably didn’t hurt much.
The method doesn’t work anymore =)