How to check your own notability
Wikipedia reviewers and platform verification reviewers apply roughly the same test, and you can apply it to yourself in an hour. Most people who do are surprised, in one direction or the other.
How do you know if you are notable enough?
Count the sources that are significant, independent and reliable. Significant means the piece is about you in detail rather than mentioning you. Independent means nobody connected to you produced it — which excludes press releases, interviews and sponsored content. Reliable means a publication with editorial oversight. Three strong sources beat thirty weak ones, and most people who think they qualify are counting the weak ones.
What you need
- An incognito browser window, so your own search history does not flatter you
- A spreadsheet, or anything you can list sources in
- An hour, and a willingness to mark your own best coverage as not counting
- 1
Collect everything
Search your name in quotes, your name with your company, your name with your city, and your name with your field. Go at least five pages deep. Add every result that is about you.
- 2
Score each source on significance
Is the piece about you, in detail? A paragraph in a roundup is a mention. A profile is significant coverage. This is the first filter and it removes most of the list.
- Significant: a profile, a feature, a case study, a substantial section of a book
- Not significant: a quote, a listing, a mention in a roundup, a directory entry
- 3
Score each source on independence
Did someone unconnected to you decide to write this? This is the filter people hate, because it usually removes their favourite links.
- Not independent: press releases, and anything reprinted from one
- Not independent: interviews and Q&As — that is you talking
- Not independent: contributor and council posts the subject or their circle wrote
- Not independent: sponsored, partnered, or paid placements
- Not independent: your own site, blog, LinkedIn, or company materials
- 4
Score each source on reliability
Does the publication have editorial oversight and a reputation for fact-checking? A national newspaper does. A content farm that republishes press releases does not, regardless of its domain rating.
- 5
Count what survives all three
Only sources that pass significance, independence and reliability count. Three or more is a real case. One or two is borderline. Zero is an answer, and a useful one.
- 6
Check the alternative routes
Specific guidelines provide other paths that do not depend on press coverage at all, and people routinely overlook the one they already satisfy.
- A major award in your field from an independent body
- Elected or appointed public office
- A substantial published, exhibited or performed body of work
- Academic standing — a named chair, or highly cited research
- For companies: regulatory significance, or substantial treatment in industry analysis
- 7
Be honest about the gap
If you have one strong source, you need more of the same kind, and that takes months rather than weeks. Knowing that is worth more than an optimistic guess, because it stops you paying for an application that will be declined.
What people get wrong
- Counting a press release reprinted by forty outlets as forty sources. It is one source, and it is not independent.
- Counting Forbes without checking whether it was staff-written or a contributor post. They are not the same thing and reviewers know it.
- Assuming revenue, headcount or funding counts. None of it does.
- Assuming follower count counts. It does not, on any platform.
- Confusing being good at something with having been written about.
When this stops being a DIY job
Our assessment is this audit done by somebody who has read a lot of declined drafts, and it is free with no account and no payment details. The value is a second opinion on the borderline sources, which is where self-assessment is least reliable.
Free notability assessmentQuestions
Last reviewed . Platform processes change; we re-check every guide quarterly.