A few weeks ago I needed to find a real estate agent but I didn't know what company she was with and she wasn't listed in the MLS. Even though she had a somewhat common name, I decided to type her name into the Google search engine and see what came up. Well, there was lots of stuff that came up, and every link was preceded by http://www.activerain.com/...

In thinking about what I had done there, it occurred to me how times have changed. When I was young, my mom told me to “Go get the Yellow Pages.” Many years later, we switched to “Call information.” Then they started charging 25¢ per call to call information, and some phone companies even had the gall to charge up to $1.50 per call to information, depending on the time of day. Fortunately, the Internet came along at about the same time, and the most common phrase today seems to be “Google it.” Too bad Google didn't trademark “Google it.” Maybe they did.

Anyway, I remembered that I had joined ActiveRain a year earlier so I decided that perhaps I needed to check it out again. Times change, and perhaps so should I. Today I Googled my name to see just where I stood. Wow!

If you haven’t done a search on your name recently, try it. Go ahead. “Google it” and see what comes up. Are you well hidden from your customers, still playing hide and seek? It might be time for a change.