These days everyone’s first stop for information, any kind of information, seems to be Google. For instance, if you want to find out which rehab clinic a specific celebrity is currently occupying, you could easily find out.

Not surprisingly, Google serves millions of queries for famous names, but chances are they also receive a few queries for your name. To know when people use Google to dig up dirt on you, all that’s required is a Google account, credit card, and five minutes of time.

1) Setup a Google Adwords account here
2) Create a fake ad, something ridiculous so no one will click on it (remember clicks cost you money)
3) Choose the keywords you want to target, make sure to put in all permutations of your name

Once everything is setup you can use Google’s excellent reports to track searches for your name. When done right, this handy service will cost nothing. Although, in case you suddenly become really popular, remember to set a small monthly budget.

Here is my ad in action:

The Seattle Post Intelligencer posted an interesting experimental article in January that compared keynote texts given by Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and Dell’s Michael Dell using keyword clouds. I know I’m a bit behind the times, but the keyword results and lengthy discussion were interesting.

If you scan over each keyword cloud, each speech evokes a different “personality”. While each speech was written for a different audience, you can’t help but notice the branding through repetition.

The popular Tag Cloud site is “getting an overhaul”, but here’s another tag-cloud generator I found while surfing. Go ahead, see what your keyword frequencies are in your web page, term paper, or presidential address.
http://www.tocloud.com/