I sought Andrew Smith’s opinion on creating a personal web footprint for a common name after he posted a comment in response to my review of Antony Mayfield’s Me and My Web Shadow.

Andy reckons that he has one of the commonest names on the internet (42 millions results returned by a Google search) and explained the two tactics that he has used over the last 20-years to ensure that he has a potent search ranking.

“I’ve used the same handle pretty much exclusively for 20-years – andismit – the result of mistyping andysmit when I first joined CIX in 1990. There is only one andismit on the Internet.”

“I also followed David Meerman Scott’s advice from three-years ago and like him, began using my middle name – again there is only one Andrew Bruce Smith on Google.

“But even on Andrew Smith bounce around on the first results page between 8 and 11. Not bad for what is one of the most common names in the world.

“And if you type in things like ‘Andrew Smith PR’ or ‘Andrew Smith marketing’ then I’m usually ranked number one or two.”