Google in particular seems to prefer it and may even rank you better when she finds you herself - or at least Ive had situations that seemed that way and have heard many others say the same thing. And of course, Google is the main engine that counts.
Best thing is to get the links out there like Rob said. The search engines spider most of the decent ranking sites and will follow your link and add you themselves. What I used to do to was leave Google a link trail and be sure she followed it by getting a couple good links out there, then click through myself (to check the link
) with the Google toolbar on. (don't have time any more but when I did it it worked well.)
I believe strongly G follows the toolbar carefully because I've gotten ranked the day I launched a new site. No one knew about it, no one linked to it, in some cases I wasn't even ready for anyone to see it - but G grabbed it and listed it and the only way she could know about it was the toolbar.