Maximizing Reach with Common Names: Eric Brown & Beyond

[Simfish]

I'm curious about what other keywords people use. Maybe we could diversity the number of keywords we use for them.

Like, one very common name would be Eric Brown.

So for that, I might add in "Eric Brown + [field name]" or "Eric Brown + site:edu + [field name]".

==

I'm also curious since I have an extremely common name myself, and I'm wondering how I could best direct people to my webpage/research once I make them.

 

[micromass]

I add some more search tags. For example, recently I had to search for the front-closure in topology. So I just type in "front-closure". Sadly, the type of response was a bit *different*
So I quickly added "topology" or "epimorphism" to the search tags. That yielded what I wanted.

So if you have an Eric Brown, then just search for "Eric Brown quantum physics" for example, or "Eric Brown MIT". Until you reach what you want...

 

[mathwonk]

i looked up "smith, algebraic geometry" and i was the second hit.

 

[Simfish]

^Interesting, you're the 9th hit when I do the same search (although that's probably because my google personalized my results for me). A certain Paul Smith at my university gets a lot of the intermediate hits.

==

Oh wow, looks like I underestimated the number of people who did google searches by last name only. But yeah - that does look common.

 

[mathwonk]

well there were only three of us on page one, paul and karen and me.

 

[mathwonk]

i tried "clark, operator theory" and my friend doug clark was the second hit. most of my other friends have rather uncommon names.

 

[mathwonk]

okay, i searched on "jones, mathematics" and did not find fields medalist vaughn jones in the first two pages, but "jones, knot theory" made him the first hit.