It actually took me a few months to get my site to rank #1 for its own brand name. It was extremely frustrating, but I worked at it and it has paid off. Now my brand name and other related terms are by far my top search terms, and this is on a site that gets 75% of its traffic organically from search engines.

Very frustrating. When picking product names now the ability to SEO them is now something I consider!

For your own name that can be pretty hard if it is a common enough name.

Alex Blom probably will do just fine (it does, I checked), but John Smith would have a much harder time of it, even John Smith the greengrocer.

When my wife and I decided to get married we wanted to both change our names to something new. For each idea we came up with, I did some web searches just to see if the name had any existing meaning or associations. The name we settled on (Moorier - a portmanteau of two family names) is almost unique on the web.

First time I ever hear of that and I'm very impressed with it, that was a really smart thing.

Who knows, maybe one day I'll put it in to practice.

I am +1'ing you just because you Googled before making a commimtment with your wife!

There is a Patrick McKenzie who does male modeling. Some of his clients are less than Google savvy. This has resulted in some very amusing customer support emails.

There is also a voice actor, who is apparently soft and sensual. That actually resulted in a phone call. I don't remember the particulars but I rather doubt I was soft or sensual at 2 AM.

> This has resulted in some very amusing customer support emails.

Care to share?

Here is my most amusing customer interaction, long ago, when webcams were pretty new:

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Me: Hello, camarades support, how can I help you?

she: Well, my cam doesn't work.

Me: Ok, what is your user id

she: randygirl99

Me: Let me have a look

Me: are you running an anti-virus package with a built in firewall ?

She: Yes

Me: ok, that's likely the problem, when you start the software you'll be prompted to enable outgoing traffic on port 2047, please answer 'yes'

She: ok, one moment

... some time passes, I hit F5 a couple of times ...

Me: ok, it works

She: oh, does it now ? Well, what am I wearing then ?

Me: well, to be honest, not a whole lot...

She: (screaming) You Pervert! ... connection breaks

---

The voice actor thing might have it's uses though, but their timing will have to improve a bit :)

Let me put it this way: I don't normally get many emails which start "Patrick, do you work nude?"

> "Patrick, do you work nude?"

Who knows what kind of a career that might have led to...

Missed opportunity if you ask me!

I take it you answered truthfully.

In many ways I'd be flattered

I totally agree, that comes down to competitiveness.

A huge issue will be, as another commenter has said, when people forget to rank their own product name.