Imagine meeting a striking woman. You enthusiastically exchange information with her, but when you call her, a few days later, she does not answer or does not return the call. What happened?
She likely did what all modern women do today: she googled you. Thanks to the signed photos, a note on a blog or a post on your Facebook wall, she came to the conclusion that you are a fraud.
Don’t think that women will not try to find out the good, bad and ugly things about you online. A survey conducted in 2006, came out with the results that more than half of adult Internet users employ search engines, to find out as much as possible about each other.
We think that these numbers would be much higher today, especially when we talk about tender relationships. Take advantage of these technological and psychological moves to look great online, and you will have a much better chance of scoring offline.
Throw out the trash
Your first step is to delete as much compromising content as possible from sites you might find yourself on – crappy blog posts from the past, embarrassing holiday photos, and the like. If it’s content, you own or a friend of yours downloads it or hides it from searching.
In fact, it is very easy to do, if you are at all good at using the Internet. Simply create a “robots.txt” file in the root directory of your site and then enter the following two lines of code: “User-agent: *” and “Disallow: /”. Most search engines will now just go over your pages.
If the garbage is on other people’s sites, try to find their webmasters on whois.com and send everyone a polite email request to remove the material. It would be wise to register on Google and Yahoo notifications, with your names as key terms. This will help keep track of new debris that may appear.
Provide a good name
The second step in your Online Rehabilitation is to restrain the pages that women see when they ask for something about you. If you however don’t use social and business sites, sign up on Facebook and LinkedIn. Both are popular and appear among the firsts on the list of search results.
If you want to emphasize yourself in the search results, register some more accounts under your targeted search term (most likely with your real and full name), on the verified ones. The more new things you respect and the more quality links that lead to and from your site, the more often and at the top these pages will appear when searching. As a final precaution, you can purchase your name from an ISP, at a cost of about 10 pounds a year, if for no other reason than to prevent anyone from exploiting the domain and posting photos from their “private” collection. With all your name on it. So you then prove it has absolutely nothing to do with you.
Sharpen your profile
Your friends may not care about Facebook at all, but they likely will so equip your page with strong and positive content. Talk about things you have a passion for. Talk about your friends, family and your favourite activities, to present yourself as someone who is globally happy and who contributes to the people around him.
All posted photos should support that message – therefore fewer photos from parties and bungee jumping, more friends, family, children and dogs. Note: If someone else has attached your name to an inappropriate image, click on the “remove tag” below the photo and it will disappear from the “Photos of You” section on your profile.
By default, Facebook is to post any minor changes you make to your profile without you being aware of it. Fix this on your main page by going to “Settings”. Click on “Privacy Settings”, then on “News Feed and Wall”. On this page, you can check the boxes so that your friends are uninformed about every new hot friend or flirting post on your wall.
Hold the strings in your hands
Even if you take all these steps and the two of you end up in a relationship, there is still potential for problems. First, a blog that mentions the two of you could raise her eyebrows. Not only is there a chance that she will misinterpret something, but it also forms a forum where others can comment on your relationship in ways that she can also misinterpret.
So focus on the fun things you do together — weekend trips, restaurants you’ve tried — without going into detail. Essentially, you can blog about your relationship if you write about how great your girlfriend is.
Second, old pictures might come up, and attractive women you know would want to be friends with you. Discard suspicion with honesty. Make it clear that these photos are part of your past – that was then, and this is now.
When it comes to making new friends, just explain how you know them. That way she won’t have to go through that nagging who these people are feeling. If she can’t deal with it, then try not to lose sleep because of it. Look for a woman who can accept what she is. Or at least a stamped and filtered version of which you are.