Be proactive about protecting your reputation…

 Safeguard your personal information, particularly on social networking sites. Open a secondary email account or use a different persona for social sites, chatrooms, web forums, etc.  Use privacy settings to set the right level of control, especially for Facebook and MySpace. Don’t give access to “Everyone.” That makes it visible to search engines, too.  Set up a Google Profile. Go to www.google.com/profiles to build a personal page that helps people get the right information when they search your name. You can do the same thing on Yahoo at profiles.yahoo.com.  Monitor your online presence by signing up for Google or Yahoo Alerts. They’ll let you know if someone searches for certain phrases, such as your name or company name.  If you find something embarrassing, talk to the source. Even better, create positive content (write a blog or an article) that will appear on search results.