Online Doubles and ShadowsAlmost five weeks have passed since I declared my intention to take the #1 spot on all the major search engines for searches on my name and, in that time, quite a few things have stood in the way of my victory.  That said, I have managed to make some inroads on Google and Yahoo!, despite being offline for the better part of two weeks, and busy as heck on side projects this last week.

PageRank Does Nothing! 

Well … not “nothing”.  However, despite having some of my Google PageRank restored, this site is still not found in the first 100 pages (yes, I checked) of results.  Oddly enough, almost every post I’ve written for other sites such as LongCountdown and MsDanielle are found in the first ten pages.  That’s some great SEO you’ve got goin’ on there Nick and Danielle!

I do have some ideas on how to start appearing in Google’s results, but it won’t be cheap.  Hopefully the online revenues earned elsewhere continue to flow regularly :???:
Slight Loss On Yahoo!

First Page on Yahoo!I seem to have lost some rank on Yahoo!, which is just a little discomforting.  Although Yahoo! is no longer the major player in online search, I hate the thought of losing ground to a scientist and two actors with the same name.  Clearly my haphazard SEO gurella tactics are not working.  That said, if you were to type “ジェイソン (Jason)”, the name I leave with comments on other sites, I’m the second non-commercial site listed.

Considering how Yahoo translates the search string before querying their database, I shouldn’t complain.

Still Number 1 on Ask!

Ask Results for Jason IrwinIt’s true.  When my name is entered into Ask, it’s still sitting at the number one spot.  Clearly the meta modifications and promotion that I’ve been doing hasn’t damaged my rep on this engine.  It’s a shame that most people don’t use the site.

From what I’ve read about how Ask ranks pages, they should be right in line with both Yahoo and MSN, but it’s obvious that they’re using some other method when listing matches.  One of my biggest concerns regarding these types of queries is the collection of my queries and automatic filtering to ensure sites I own and operate are left out of the results.  When I’m feeling particularly paranoid, I will admit to connecting to an open WiFi access point with my PDA and checking these results.  Considering the intelligence that goes on behind the screen at Google and some of the other sites, it wouldn’t surprise me if such a thing were actually happening.

Finally On Live’s First Page

Microsoft seems to have been kind enough to put me on the first page, which is a heck of a lot better than the sixth page result last time.  Hopefully I can close the gap just a little bit more before next month to clinch the number one spot.  While I might not have much sway on Google for this search term, owning it on Ask and MSN would be a decent consolation prize.

What’s Next?

It seems that some of the lessons I’ve learned from the online gurus over the last few months are certainly paying off.  Building links and getting yourself out there is certainly a great way to get the search engines to pay attention, as is having an SEO-friendly site.  Although there’s still quite a bit of work to do before I can claim victory, I’m glad to see that I’m that much closer to the finish line.

The next phase will be to introduce some advertising on a few sites, as well as the promotion of an upcoming mobile blogging tool, which I hope will be quite useful to bloggers who use Windows Mobile devices and want a full-featured application to post to, edit, note and monitor their sites.  More on this later….

Is anyone else fighting for their name on the world’s big search engines?  Have you had any success?