Lails in luck with Google

A Wall Street Journal article about people's names and Google has been creating a lot of buzz this week among the blogger crowd.

For Lails, there's good news. The name's pretty rare -- and that's good on Google's home page. Enter "John Lail," for instance, in Google with the quotes and it comes up with 84 results (as least it did tonight). Enter "John Smith" and you get 2.74 million results; without the quotes, you get 458 million results. That'd take awhile to pore through.

As Anne Zelenka says: "No, these days, you’d do well to have an unusual name that will not leave you buried by more famous people in Google searches. .... Parents even resort to checking Google before naming their children, hoping to give their offspring a leg up in the online market of professional repute."

It used to be that if you entered Lail in Google, the first result was always actress Leah Lail (whatever happened to her, anyway), but alas, she's been dethroned by a vineyard. Tony Lail Vineyards is No. 1.

The Zelenka piece as well as one from Scott Karp suggest some ways to move your name up Google's search results. But seriously, if your name is Lail and someone enters your name in Google, you'll likely be on the first page of results.

Maybe all those mispronunciations are worth it, aren't they. Mr. Lyle!

Try it.