Test your GQ!

2008-02-20T12:28:00.001-08:00

In a presidential year you may bet candidate and likely new U.S. President Barack Obama and his team have spent plenty of time and money on new media or internet campaigning. I remember months ago receiving 'friend' invites from Barack on my various social networking sites and knew his strategy to win included new media. In this age of micro-trending, it is imperative and Obama's GQ, or Google Quotient exponentially unbeatable.

So Obama and his team are successful utilizing the internet to harness and excite that often coveted and nearly do tween/X-er demographic. What about you? What about your company? How do you harness the power of the Internet with the precision and expertise of a smart U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate? You increase your GQ!

I am an expert at GQ, helping folks like yourself understand and better utilize the efficiency of this powerful new paradigm. It takes time to both learn, understand and implement my methods of improving your GQ, but the results will be thousand fold for your personal life or your business.

The first step we take in improving your GQ is establishing your baseline. Establish your GQ baseline can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. I suggest beginning by developing a Google Quotient baseline using simple search parameters. Here are the first steps I take with every GQ client. Follow each step yourself to determine your Google Quotient and GQ Goals.

1.) Write down the words that best define you. i.e. MY FIRST MIDDLE LAST NAME.
2.) Now Perform a Google Search using all the text you wrote above.

Web	www.Myspace.com
www.Youtube.com	wwww.yahoo.com

3.) Spend time reviewing your Google search results. Take a scientific approach. Perform Multiple searches on various data engines including Yahoo!, YouTube, and MySpace. I've included the radio buttons above to make it easier for you. Follow all links you feel are relevant to your GQ. Print out at least the first three pages of this baseline search. The more pages you include in your review the more accurate your baseline results will be; however, you may find the relevance of your searches may begin fading out. For example at page five. It is likely safe to discontinue including this data in your GQ baseline reading. If your search produces 'No Results', then you must decide whether or not you want any results. It is rare a search produces no results, though if it is you are a very private person and enjoy this privacy, it may be time to consider implementing a strategy and tactics to keep your personal information off of the web.

4.) Next, write down how many search results your Google search brings back to you i.e. 283,00 results. Include the date of your search and how many of the search results you've personally reviewed or printed out i.e. 22 results reviewed on 50 search pages. By simple division 22 / 283,000 this will provide you the percentage of baseline you are truly working with inside the vast expanse of the Google Universe and beyond.

5.) Repeat steps 1 through 4 for your same above search terms in relevant combinations, even try placing quotes around your terms. i.e. "MY FULL NAME IN QUOTES and MY CITY"

Following these five steps you should have compiled a folder of data you will now use to understanding your GQ baseline. Review the results of your searches, open the pages that are relevant to you, perhaps a newspaper article by your local newspaper online. Did you win an award, did you get arrested? Print what you will like to include in your baseline data. Take several hours to honestly analyze the data you've collected on yourself. You will next utilize this data to create your GQ statement and goals.

GQ Statement, Goals

This is the part of the process you are able to incorporate yourself into an interactive part of the world wide web and Internet community by consciously accepting your present GQ position and creating and declaring your GQ goals. Here is an example.

Jane Doe's GQ Statement:

There are about 283,000 search results returned from my name Jane Doe, including images of unidentified victims. There are no direct links related to me Jan Doe the person on the first three pages of Web Page Search Results and none of my pictures are on the first three pages of Image results. However, the Google Maps identifies my address in the first listing, even providing a picture of my house.

Jane Doe's GQ Goals:

I would like a search relevant to me and my profession in Boston MA to be included on the first three pages of Google's Web Search Results and I would like my personal address to be removed and private from Google Maps.

Now our example Jane Doe, has established her GQ baseline with a defining statement and created actually two GQ goals which are both measurably. Now, it is time for Jane Doe to create a strategy and implement tactics towards these goals.

This is the challenging and rewarding part of developing, improving, or removing your GQ.

Yes I said, removing your GQ! Your GQ goals can be to push certain unfavorable or unwanted Google search results about you out of the Internet mix. Honestly, it is more difficult to keep your personal and private information OFF of the Internet than it is to put it on.

This isn't for the novice or faint of heart. Because most busy people barely have time to properly check their emails, I keep a gaggle of programmers busy for clients wishing to improve or remove their GQ. For public relations folks like ourselves, it is a full time job.

Just ask President Obama.

In Part 2 of this series, "Test Your GQ!: Your 10 Next Steps to Rock on Google," we will discuss 10 easy steps you can take to improve your GQ and secure your online future.

The first step is to subscribe to my blog TESTYOURGQ.blogspot.com by clicking on your RSS feed button on your browser now and adding TESTYOURGQ.blogspot.com to your feeds list. Complete step one for the other nine steps with frequently updated reports.

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About the Author: Joel Bales is a public relations and new media specialist working in the rapidly proliferating fields of micro-trend analysis and consumer data generation. Mr. Bales leads electronic product and market entry point integration campaigns and publications for a variety of industry clients around the world. Are you a busy executive, aspiring professional or small business in need of a GQ Makeover? Contact Joel for a quote.