Why isn't my personal website showing up when I search my (unique) name on Google, but it does for Bing?

Hi! Sorry, I apologize if I'm posting in the wrong place.

I have no knowledge or expertise in SEO – I recently created a Squarespace website for my small (one-person) side business, as a non-profit freelancer. I have done everything Squarespace recommends to improve SEO and my website still isn't showing at all when you google my name.

I have a pretty unique name. When you google my name, the first page of search results are all related to me. Some of these results are more than 5 years old -- old articles written in my university paper, etc. I thought that getting on the first page of google for my name would be as simple as creating the website, since it would be the most recent entry related to my name. I am learning the hard way that that’s not the case! The funny thing is, I followed all of Squarespace’s advice for both Google and Bing – but it only worked on Bing. On Bing, my personal website is the number 1 search result for my name but on Google my webpage does not appear at all.

A lot of the advice I’m seeing online is to post a lot of content, but I get enough business through word of mouth. This website is more for image-management – I would rather that if someone google my name, the first thing that pops up isn’t an awkward news interview I did when I was 17! The template I am using does not lend itself well to frequent updates or additional blog entries, it’s just a coverpage and a contact form: https://carroll-demo.squarespace.com/

Is there any quick way to get my personal webpage as the top search result for my name on Google? It was so easy on Bing, I am finding Google is a whole different situation. I would be so grateful for any advice you have or resources you can direct me to.

A few questions / points:

• Are you using the Squarespace provided subdomain rather than your own domain name? This could have a negative SEO impact
• Your name only appears in the site name. That's not a lot for Google to go on when it's working out an authority score. 
• It seems like you're shying away from providing a lot of content, However, at present you have hardly any content and that's not a good thing. 
• Links from old sites have a tendency to stick around, especially if they are from large authority sites. 
• To Google most recent is less important than most relevant. 
• You should consider creating links from your social site profiles (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc) to your new site.
• Have you told Google that your site exists?
• Google can behave strangely for new sites. They may initially be indexed and then suddenly disappear, only to return weeks later once Google has decided on a ranking. Even then, there is no guarantee you will reach the top.  
• Consider setting up and maintaining a Google My Business profile

Also - your name doesn't appear to be that unique. There are lots of Clayton Carrolls on LinkedIn, for instance. 

See - https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?firstName=Clayton&lastName=Carroll&origin=SEO_PSERP

Also dozens on Facebook..

same here!!! can't find my website ANYWHERE on google and my domain name is not the one generated by Squarespace! its just jaelazar.com. I also don't understand why there is no www. infant of my name! so awkward. now I have a beautiful website and it is completely unfindable. so frustrated

actually even if someone types the whole url into google my website will not come up and it is fully published publicly 

5 hours ago, Jaelaz said:

my website will not come up and it is fully published publicly

How long has the site been published? If it is newly published, it can take from several weeks to months for your site get indexed. There are no guarantees that putting your site online will get it crawled.

Have you proactively asked Google to index your site? There is info online on how to do that.

5 hours ago, Jaelaz said:

I also don't understand why there is no www.

It is purely a personal preference to have the www or not. I tend to prefer the www myself. Kind of an old school thing. But for marketing purposes some folks like to shorten the URL as much as possible. I think that was a thing back in the day when someone would hand you a business card with a URL and you wanted to make it easy for them to get to your site. These days I think that kind of interaction is much less likely.

So to your query. There is a setting on your site to use the www or not. It is at Home > Settings > Domains > the domain for your site (there is a list, click on the domain). The first select menu allows you to choose between www or no www.

Let us know how it goes.