TL;DR The Google results for my name show someone (not me) with a felony and I’m worried that it’s scaring off potential clients.
So I’m in a bit of a funny/horrifying freelancer pickle. I’ve spent years building up my reputation as a freelancer, specifically on Upwork. I’m proud of the way I conduct myself with clients; I deliver high-quality work before the deadline, I respond to messages in a timely manner, I create systems and processes so both my clients and I can be successful, and I approach my freelancing projects with a professional and business mindset.
What’s my problem, you may ask? Well, I saw my profile views on Upwork drastically increase yesterday and I wanted to know where the traffic was coming from. I joined another freelancer community recently and thought maybe people had found my Upwork profile by Googling my name (I pay for the Upwork Membership Plan so the url to my profile is my name).
However, I Googled my own name and this is where the problem arose: The third result on the first SERP is a news article about a woman with the same name as me (not me) being convicted of a violent felony (no judgement! I hope she gets help.). On the second page of the results for my name is her mugshot and another article about how she was arrested for a felony charge.
I’m worried that potential clients are Googling me and this is what they see. The clients I would actually want to work with are the ones who have reasoning skills and can recognize that there is more than one person with a certain name. But it still makes me worried!
This is such an odd situation and I’d be open to getting insights from the Freelancer Forum community. What do I do? What CAN I do? Am I overreacting?
Also, this is a good reminder that the internet is a wild place, so do your best and live your life. Eat, drink (not as much as Messy Jessy over there), and be merry! There’s not much we can do besides try our best.
