If you google "Mykhailo Klimnyk" — you won't find me. Instead, Google shows someone else entirely: Mykhailo Kolisnyk, random LinkedIn profiles, surname coincidences. My name in Latin script simply doesn't exist on the internet.
The Cyrillic version is slightly better, but still not great. Searching "Михайло Климнюк" returns court registries and criminal chronicles — results where I appear as a victim in a years-old case. Not exactly the "business card" you want someone to see when they type your name into a search bar.
The Problem
In today's world, your name in Google is your digital reputation. Someone decides to learn more about you, types your name into a search bar — and forms an opinion in seconds. Whether it's accurate or not depends entirely on what the search engine shows them.
And if the search engine tells the wrong story — that's a problem.
Before I started working on this site, the situation looked like this:
- "Mykhailo Klimnyk" (Latin) → zero relevant results, complete confusion with other people
- "Михайло Климнюк" (Cyrillic) → court registry and criminal news where I'm the victim, not the accused
Now the situation is getting better — but back then there wasn't a single hint that I work with data, build lakehouses, or configure ETL pipelines. A complete disconnect between the real person and what the internet "knows" about them.
The Solution
The only reliable way to control what Google shows for your name is to create your own authoritative resource. Not a social media page you don't control, but a full website on your own domain.
That's why I built klimnyk.dev — a personal website that:
- Ranks for all variations of my name: Mykhailo Klimnyk, Михайло Климнюк, Михаил Климнюк
- Clearly shows who I am and what I do — Head of Data, not some random person from a court registry
- Works in multiple languages for maximum search coverage
- Has proper Schema.org markup so Google understands this is a website about a specific person
Technical Approach
The site is built with a focus on speed and SEO:
- Eleventy (11ty) — static site generator, HTML is built at compile time, not on the server
- Tailwind CSS — minimal CSS with no bloat
- Oracle Cloud VM + nginx — free hosting on an Always Free micro instance (AMD EPYC, 1/8 OCPU, 1 GB RAM)
- Cloudflare — CDN, SSL, protection
- Multilingual — separate URLs for each language with hreflang tags
No React, no WordPress. Pure HTML that loads in milliseconds and that search bots can index without any issues.
Why Should You Care?
If you work in IT (or any other field) and care about how people perceive you — check what Google shows for your name. You might be surprised.
A personal website isn't vanity. It's a tool for controlling your own reputation. Your digital business card that works 24/7, even while you sleep.
This is my first post here, and I plan to write more — about data, technology, ETL pipelines, and everything that interests me as Head of Data. But the first post had to be about this: why all of this exists in the first place.
If you have questions or want to discuss — find me on LinkedIn or GitHub.