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Wednesday, December 17, 2008

New Thing #341--Egosurfing

Son Donald told me in that he saw his brother Brian's name and picture on the Internet (as a result of his participation in a contest for school). I asked Donald how he knew this about his brother; he said he often Googled people's names to see what came up. The concept intrigued me, and I wondered if I showed up anywhere on the Internet. Today I Googled myself to find out.

I typed my first and last name into the Google search bar and hit Enter. There were more than a hundred responses to my search. The first and second hits were profiles for a social networking site; the first was someone with my same name, but the second result was "me".

It was interesting to see other people that had "my" name. There were results for a business owner, a person who works in the medical field, a teacher's assistant, a photographer, and a woman who was inducted into the Old-Time Country Music Hall of Fame. When I expanded my search to include alternate spellings of my first name, I also found a medical technician and a veterinarian.

I was glad to see that none of the sites I checked had mean-spirited or salacious information about anyone who shared my name. I'd like to think that all of the people who share my name are upstanding citizens who wouldn't do anything wrong.

5 comments:

  1. I google myself on a regular basis to see what is out there. As for as I have been able to determine I am the only person on the earth with my name. It is so unusual.

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  2. Unfortunately if I google my name I come up with a variety of people including porn stars and television news readers... I wish I had a name like dkzody :-)

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  3. I Google myself a lot. I have a gigantic ego. I used to find quite a lot of stuff, but now that I'm no longer involved in journalism...not so much.

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  4. I did this a while ago, and most of the hits were me. I did it again today, and still they're mostly me, although there is someone in Ireland with the same name as me.

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  5. I've googled myself before because I don't use my real name on any of my websites and I want to be sure that I am not appearing by chance anywhere else. Sure, there are plenty of people out there with the same name as me, but if someone googled me by name, they'd never find me. At least not the way things stand right now.

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