Prologue: I Used to Own KennyKane.com
My high school teacher Susan Meagher once told me I had a great name and I shouldn't waste it.
I was fifteen, maybe sixteen, sitting in her classroom at Islip High School, probably talking about some website I was building for a friend or a relative or one of the dozen silly projects I'd pick up and abandon within a week. I was that kid. The one who knew just enough HTML to be dangerous and just enough about domain registration to think I was building something important.
Mrs. Meagher could have said a lot of things. But what stuck with me wasn't a generic compliment. It was specific. She told me I had a name. Kenny Kane. It had rhythm. It was memorable. It rolled off the tongue. "Don't waste it," she said.
So I didn't. I registered KennyKane.com.
It cost me $15. For a broke high school kid in 2003, that wasn't nothing. But I did it anyway. I built a website. It was terrible. Blue background, white text, probably some animated GIFs I thought were cutting-edge design. I updated it occasionally. Mostly, I just liked knowing that when someone typed KennyKane.com into a browser, they found me.
• • •
A year later, the renewal notice came.
$15 again. Same amount. Different context.
I was still broke. Maybe more broke. And the website hadn't done anything for me. No one was visiting it. No opportunities had materialized. It was just sitting there, a digital placeholder that reminded me I existed on the internet.
I had a decision to make.
Keep paying $15 a year to maintain a website no one visited, or let it go and spend that money on something that mattered. Gas for my car. A slice of pizza. Literally anything else.
I chose literally anything else.
I let KennyKane.com expire in 2004.
• • •
A few months later, I decided I'd made a mistake. I wanted it back.
I went to the domain registrar, typed in KennyKane.com, and saw the words that would shape the next twenty years of my digital life:
This domain is already registered. Someone else owned it now.
I clicked through to see who. Maybe it was a squatter. Maybe I could buy it back. Maybe it wasn't too late.
It was a comedian. In California. Also named Kenny Kane.
I sat there staring at the screen, processing what this meant.
There was another Kenny Kane out there. Not my dad. Not a relative. Not someone I knew. Just another person who happened to share my name and who, unlike me, had the foresight to hold onto his domain when the renewal notice came.
It was a sobering moment, years before I would ever touch alcohol.
I wasn't unique. My name wasn't special. And the digital real estate I'd carelessly abandoned was now occupied by someone who had more conviction than I did.
• • •
For a while, I didn't think much about it. I was busy. I graduated high school. I went to college. I started working. I got involved in cancer advocacy after my dad's diagnosis, which eventually led me to co-found a national nonprofit called Stupid Cancer.
But the internet kept reminding me that I wasn't the only Kenny Kane.
Google searches would surface the comedian first. Then me. Then a rapper in Memphis. Then a football player. Then random LinkedIn profiles of other Kenny Kanes scattered across the country.
My friend and CEO at Stupid Cancer, Matthew Zachary, had a massive online presence. Thousands of followers. Media appearances. A personal brand that opened doors. We had this unspoken competition, this gentleman's race to see who could build more clout. Follower counts. Klout scores. Retweets. All the superficial, endorphin-inducing metrics that made you feel like you mattered on the internet.
I was losing.
Not because I wasn't doing interesting work. I was. I was building systems, launching programs, scaling a nonprofit from 15,000 to 325,000 followers. I was writing. I was speaking. I was doing things that should have made me visible.
But when someone Googled "Kenny Kane," they didn't find me first. They found the comedian. Or the rapper. Or a character from a novel I'd never heard of.
I didn't own my name. Not digitally. Not in the place where it mattered most.
• • •
This book is the story of what happened next.
It's a longitudinal review of a two-decade pursuit to reclaim digital territory I never should have lost. It's about the strategies that didn't work (chasing social media clout, assuming a good website was enough, hoping Google would just figure it out). And it's about the strategies that did work (structured data, Wikidata optimization, speaking the language that machines understand).
It's about the humbling reality that I am not the only Kenny Kane. That I never will be. That the comedian in California still owns KennyKane.com and probably always will.
But it's also about the fact that in 2025, I built a Google Knowledge Panel in a single day without owning the perfect domain, without a Wikipedia page, and without waiting for someone to anoint me as "notable."
I did it by understanding how search engines and AI systems actually work. By building a validation loop across platforms. By creating structured, machine-readable data that told Google exactly who I was and what I did.
I didn't need KennyKane.com. I needed a system.
• • •
The internet has changed since 2004. Back then, owning your exact-match domain felt like the only path to digital credibility. If you didn't have YourName.com, you were starting from a deficit.
Now, in the age of AI-first search, Knowledge Panels, and large language models that answer questions instead of returning blue links, the rules are different.
You don't win by owning the perfect URL. You win by being cited. By being structured. By making it easy for machines to understand who you are, what you do, and why you matter.
This book will show you how to do that.
Not through vanity metrics or endless content creation. Not by becoming a full-time personal brand influencer or gaming the algorithm with clickbait.
Through strategy. Through systems. Through understanding what actually moves the needle when you're trying to be discoverable in a world where you're not the only person with your name.
• • •
Some context before we begin:
I'm writing this as the CEO of two companies and the CTO of a third. I don't have time to be a content creator. I don't have the luxury of posting daily on LinkedIn or building a massive social media following. I need efficiency. I need systems that work without constant maintenance.
If that sounds like you, this book is for you.
If you've ever Googled yourself and been frustrated by what you found (or didn't find), this book is for you.
If you have a common name, or if you've been confused with someone else online, or if you've built a successful career but remain digitally invisible, this book is for you.
If you've lost something you thought was essential and had to figure out how to succeed anyway, this book is definitely for you.
• • •
I still don't own KennyKane.com.
The comedian does. And honestly, that's fine. He got there first. He held on when I let go. He made the better decision in 2004.
But I own Kenny-Kane.com (with a hyphen). I own my Wikidata entry. I own my Google Knowledge Panel. I own the structured data that tells every search engine and AI system exactly who I am.
And in 2026, that counts for more than the domain ever did.
Mrs. Meagher was right. I do have a great name.
I just had to learn how not to waste it.
• • •