Finally, I'm Jon Siegel

After several years of trying, I am finally Jon Siegel. Of course, that's always been my name, but that name hasn't always been primarily me. Who decides who has the number one claim to being Jon Siegel? Google, of course.

For quite a while, the primary meaning of "Jon Siegel", as determined by Google, was a certain Jon Siegel, Ph.D. and Vice President (Technology Transfer) of the Object Management Group. Not only does he own www.jonsiegel.com (I had to be satisfied with the somewhat less appealing www.jsiegel.net), but he was on the top of Google's Jon Siegel chart for quite a few years. Unfortunately, he had multiple myeloma, a form of bone marrow cancer, but fortunately, his "multiple myeloma blog" reveals that he experienced complete remission several years ago, and today he's still listed on the executive page at Object Management Group.

In any event, while I wish my namesake the best of health, I was happy to see myself creeping up the search results over the past year or two. At first I was hardly even on the first page of a Jon Siegel search (although I was always pretty high in the search rankings for Jonathan Siegel), but things got better and better until I recently became, pretty reliably, the number one result in a search for either Jon Siegel or Jonathan Siegel. I think it's probably the tax pages that helped -- I know they're a little eccentric, but they are the most-visited part of my website.

I'm still only on page 13 of a search for just "Siegel" -- right behind Rosenthal, Siegel & Muenkel, LLP. That's what you get for having a common name, and I have two of them. But at least I own the combination -- for now.