Anyone can Google anyone by name and find information about that person, or at least, people who have some online presence. Unfortunately, as I painfully found out, you can't always control those results.
Searching by my nickname and last name, "Cliff Cada", returns the results I want. The top result is my LinkedIn profile. The second is my Salesforce Trailblazer profile. The problem with the second result is that is my work profile. I have a separate Trailblazer profile that doesn't even come up.
If the searcher is more savvy, that person can search specific sites like Facebook or YouTube. If I search for my name with quotes in Google, which tells Google to find the entire string together, I stumble upon this YouTube page with my name on it. This isn't my page. I attempted to contact YouTube, provided them my information, even a copy of my passport. And they said that wasn't enough for them to shut down that account. If that other person posts offensive videos or negative videos, that may affect my future employment prospects, or even put my current employment in jeopardy.
I suppose if you are famous or rich or both, you can employ a PR team and a legal team to control your brand both online and off. But for regular folks like me, I can only do so much before hitting a wall like what I assume to be a YouTube bot that automatically rejected my request.
It is always a good idea to periodically Google yourself, and ensure the top results are reflective of the online presence you want to project.
