It has a way of going up and down, but finally - it seems quite stable that filination.com is the top search result for my first name - Fili. Even Google Webmasters Central is reporting it. You’d expect that to be easy, but it’s really not that trivial. Competing with me on the Fili Google search engine rankings were a few eager companies of the same name, not to mention a Wikipedia entry and a virus with my name :

It was so much simpler with my name in Hebrew (”פילי”) as there aren’t any Israelis I know of with that name :

Wikipedia is an especially difficult one. That site’s authority is so high on Google that with popular keywords it’s almost impossible to beat.

Either way, branding your name on Google has its affect, especially when you claim you know something about SEO. The first thing most people who want to know me do is Google my name and read what I’m about. It surprises me everytime how people I’ve never met know so much of what I do without me having to tell them anything about that. I had a friend that made a few business cards for me with nothing on it except a big “Fili” logo and a short small font caption under it saying “Just Google me”. The few I’ve given those cards to were happy with the idea of me promoting myself that way. It just makes your point so much better than anything else.