That got me thinking, how easy am I to find online? I have been told that when applying for post-docs or faculty positions you should try to have some link to your research come up within the first ten hits when you search for your name (or your name + "physics") on Google. I decided to try us all out and here are the results, in order of Google rank):
1 (tie): Jared - Jared's blogger profile is the #1 result when Google looks for Jared Greenwalds. Interestingly, that beats out a British meteorologist's reseach page.
1 (tie): Ryan - Searching for Ryan Tanner is a lost cause but "Ryan Tanner physics" brings up Ryan's smiling face on the very out-of-date BYU physics theory page as the top result.
1 (tie): Laren - The first result for Laren is his spring 2008 office hours schedule.
4: Joe - Joe's other blog comes in at #2 when I search for Joseph Smidt.
5: Me - The #8 result for "Nicholas Nelson" is a poster I presented at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC-Santa Barbara last summer.
6: Bill - Neither "Bill Evans" or "Bill Evans physics" produces a result related to Bill in the first 10 hits. Better luck next time.
Pay no attention to "my other blog". It serves two purposes:
ReplyDelete1. I wanted to give wordpress a try so needed an experimental blog. As I said earlier, it has a ton more features but blogger is directly connected with Google and we are used to it.
2. I helped package a bunch of scientific python packages for Fedora since I wanted them to work on some of the Fedora machines we have at school. I was made a member of their community and needed a blog that would get aggregated on their Planet blog: http://planet.fedoraproject.org/. I thought this blog got a little too much non-Fedora traffic to aggregate this one.
Other then that I consider this my true blog whether or not Google prefers it.
If you recall I've done the same thing with Ubuntu. For example, if you remember, I packed Texmaker so there would be a nice GUI latex editor to use.
ReplyDeleteNow I just use Vi so no more packaging texmaker for me. :)
Try searching my pseudonym "Quantumleap42". I have a monopoly on that one.
ReplyDeleteWow! you sure do.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, you have to admit that my name is a bit more common than most, so I'd hardly consider it a fair shot.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, searching for "William Evans physics" shows me at #3 and #6, while "William R. Evans physics" shows me at #2-#4. Also, ""William R. Evans" physics" puts me at #1 and #2. (It's all about the quotes.)
Anyways, I guess the moral of the story for me is, when applying for positions, apply as William rather than Bill.
I stand corrected Bill. In fact, if I search for Nick Nelson I don't get any hits related to me. That means that you would be in 5th and I take up last place. Sorry for the mistake.
ReplyDeleteI'm not trying to point out mistakes. Frankly, I just feel bad that I missed out on getting billevans.com or williamevans.com (both of which are funny how unrelated they are). Anyways, as always, great post!
ReplyDelete