Living in today's digitally connected world isn't easy-- especially when it seems like everyone and everything is on Facebook and can easily be searched with Google. While many of us try and keep our names out of the gossip ring, sometimes a skanky picture of you just ends up on a blog. What happens, then, if your name is smeared? What are you supposed to do?

MSNBC offered a number of ways to "clean up" the digital dirt. The most surprising way? Post MORE stuff about yourself-- but good, neutral things. The farther down the Google search and the more pages in it is, the less likely that future employers, managers, or admission groups will see it:

"The content should be of a nature that is at least neutral, at best positive, for your career prospects. Blog about your professional interests. Discuss research you have conducted yourself on a topic of interest.”

 

Gammel believes in burying the Internet skeletons in positive cyber dust. “Once the less savory items are pushed off your first page of ego search results on Google, you'll be fine with most people,” he notes. “That's why you have to post more, not less, to get rid of the impact of those skeletons."

 

The blog also recommends Googling (yeah, it's a verb) your name now, to see what comes up. The worst slander is slander you didn't even know existed. It also says that, while you may ask site owners to take down bad names, not to push the subject too hard. That can only make things worse.

Ok, my fellow collegians, make sure to get on there and clean up your name before it's too late. As a number of us prepare to go out into the big bad world, I hope we can keep ourselves off the blogosphere and be ready to get Googled by, oh, everyone it seems.