People Were More Likely To Google Themselves This Year

Ponca City, We Love You writes "More than twice as many Americans googled themselves in 2006 than five years previous — and many are googling their friends and romantic interests as well, according to a report released ecently by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The survey shows that the percentage of US adult Internet users who have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine has more than doubled in the past five years (pdf) from 22 percent in August, 2001 to 47 percent in December, 2006. Only 3 percent of internet self-googlers say they Google themselves regularly, 22 percent say 'every once in a while,' and three-quarters say they have googled themselves once or twice. The original report, 'Digital Footprints,' contains many more interesting observations (pdf)."

Google?

I hear they have that on computers now.

Re:Google?

So I have. So, how many people googled themselves after reading this post?

i wonder

how many knew enough to put it in quotations?

for this community (slashdot)

people were always more likely to ___________ themselves this year

google themselves?

I've been googling myself at a pretty steady frequency since about the time I turned 13!

Re:google themselves?

When I was 13, I had to look myself up in the card catalog... we didn't have fancy Google searched back then...

...what?

You may google my user name, not my given name

Am I the only person who has actively concealed themselves from prying online eyes?

I've been a pretty affluent internet creature since the mid 90's (yes, a latecomer in this crowd, I understand) and since my first forays onto the www I've filled-out registration information with bogus info. Having done this for more than a decade, I can in fact google myself, but only via usernames and other pseudonyms.

Even my myspace and facebook profiles are semi-bogus. I understand that certain high-profile instances will launch your true identity into the limelight (any bit of media publicity for example), but I constantly hear about individuals who are googleable, not because of a media instance, but simply because they have placed themselves into the great index.

Who has willfully made themselves searchable, and why? I have enjoyed a fruitful, successful life in the IT industry this whole time and I have not yet needed to put my personal info into a publicly searchable and available location.

What are the benefits? I ask, because to me, being a very private person, I see mostly, maybe overwhelmingly, negative results.

Re:You may google my user name, not my given name

Well, if you've been around since the 1990's on the web, and you haven't been forced into a situation where your credentials are your real name I'd assume you're lucky. Almost my entire web presence as an individual is due to School/Work accounts that forced me to use my real name as my credentials and subsequently published them (or had them published via 3rd party sendlists etc.)

My psuedonym has a 30:1 ratio of hits on google to my real name however, and with a modicum of searching I'm sure you could tie the two together...

Re:You may google my user name, not my given name

If you only associate positive things with your name, it can help when potential employers do a cursory check on you.

Re:You may google my user name, not my given name

Man. I get that the reality is people are super judgemental and that we're always playing the reputation game whether we like it or not... but it does bum me out that people have to be so fake all the time. People haven't come to accept that others are sometimes as wild and crazy as we are. Everyone has skeletons in the closet, so why is everyone so shocked when they find other people's skeletons in the closet? Meh.

I suppose I'm an idiot: I wear my freakdom like a badge of honor most of the time. Anyone could find out pretty easily that I was part of a white rap group, an offensive punk band, and that I directed a film that features Jesus smoking a joint. So far it hasn't been a problem, and I've had some good jobs. But I bet it will bite me eventually. Oh well... I'm going to try to represent: you can be wild and crazy at times and still be extremely diplomatic and professional when called for.

I hope someday we can deal with people being multi-faceted.

Cheers.

Re:You may google my user name, not my given name

Like anything else, the benefits will vary depending on who you are. You indicate that you have a successful life in the IT industry. You probably work for a school or business, and have no need for people to be able to find you on the Internet.

By contrast, small businessmen, artists, private doctors, lawyers, politicians, and a host of other types of people not only benefit from being visible on the internet, they need to be there in order to seem legitimate to potential clients or customers.

My guess is, in the future, how we think about the face we present on the internet will be a lot like how we think about getting dressed in the morning. We'll ask ourselves, "Where am I going, and is anyone important going to see me there?"

I'm not who I say I am

Apparently I'm not a writer but a prolific techno god in Russia. This is exciting news.

Third party

I much prefer having other people google me. So much more satisfying.

Ummmm

How do they know that people are googling themselves??????

Re:Ummmm

They did a survey. The links in the article point that out quite clearly.

Famous

I googled myself but none of the search results are about me. Apparently there is a musician with the same name and all the results are about him.

i google myself once in a while

usually find some interesting stuff, and google images always has the best pics of me. (SafeSearch is Off)

SEO seeding...

I google myself every now and then to check that I'm first for my name in Google [google.com] and Google Images [google.com]. It helps long lost friends find me. Better than trying to guess which social networks I'm in.

Of course, Slashdot's page rank can only help here, hence this comment :)

For those of you that think I'm a Perl programming asshole [cliveholloway.net] though, feel free to help build that little googlebomb ;-)

And, how many reach moisture

upon finding themselves in the Google listings? More than 99.9999999% of us are just "ordinary", unspectacular beings. Conceit, delusion and illusion makes us think we are more or worth more than we really rate.

By the same token, I rate the populace more valuable than most politicians, as the are extraordinary, but extraordinarily super-conceited...

Something people don't talk about!

I happen to "google" myself in the shower every morning, but it's not exactly newsworthy.

Good or... ?

Is it good or bad that the top google results for your handle (tyrus sithius) are from razor 1911 greets from 1996?

I googled my real name and just saw other people's successes......

Its safer you know

With all those viruses hanging around. GTD Googly Transmitted Disease

Launchpad

Last year, googling my own name was fun, because it actually turned up a few interesting things I had almost forgotten about. This year, despite the fact that there are several pieces of open source software released under my real name, and hundreds of mailing list posts, most of the results appear to be useless pages in Ubuntu's Launchpad. Which I didn't even use, except for reporting a few bugs...

Spread the word:

Self Googling will make you blind.

More info on Facebook than google

I haven't had much luck searching for people on google. Its just too hard to find info on the right firstname lastname. Using facebook to find out about people is far easier. Even if you only have a first name and know they are local it is fast. I do it all the time. After I meet a girl at the bar, I'll always look her up on facebook before I call her up. It works both ways though, and can be pretty scary sometimes. I went out on a date with a girl last month and she knew everything about me. I was very weird ... a real turn off. So I would advise anyone to keep their facebook/google intellegence quiet.

I suppose

Cmdr Taco googling himself would come up with 5 million references to "Lame". :P

Google Alerts

Since I have a pretty rare name, I created a Google alert with my name.
I receive around one mail every week.

I guess this makes me a continuous self-googler since 2 years.

Cause and Effect

People who read articles about Googling themselves are more likely to Google themselves. It's self a fulfilling article!

Can you blame me?

My name (Chinese) is "She MaTing".

"Google themselves" ?

[Ben Stein Voice]That sounds diiiiirty[/Ben Stein Voice]

In other news...

Self Googling has been discovered to cause cancer.

Apparently I am either

A mechanic
A writer
A photographer
A director of Rolls Royce
A mortgage provider

oooh. A War correspondent!

 

Trademark Joke

This article is almost identical to one from 1977, except that one said:

"More than twice as many Americans xeroxed themselves in 1976 than five years previous -- and many are xeroxing their friends and romantic interests as well, according to a report released recently by the Pew Copyrigh and American Life Project.

You guys are flexible

Man, if I could google myself, I'd never leave the house.

In Sovier Russia

Yourself googles you.

googling [...] their romantics

will it make em come?

oblig. Buffy quote

[Xander reviews a high-school student's records.]

Willow: Have you Googled her yet?
Xander: Willow! She's seventeen!
Willow: It's a search engine.

How many cringe at what they posted in the past

I wonder how many found some infantile remarks they made in rec.arts.stereo 10 or 20 years ago (or some other site notorious for flame-fests)
and cringe when they read the stuff they wrote then? Or how many liberals turned conservative, or had some other big change in attitude?
 

I call bullpoop on this one.

And how exactly do they know which people googled themselves and which people googled others? I think there's just a little dollop of bullshit in this one. 76.288% of statistics are made up on the fly.

I have the same name as a famous serial killer

So that's kinda uncomfortable. For you.

Google yourself?

Doesn't this cause blindness?

Hairy palms?

Finally !!!

After millennia of people asking themselves "Who am I?" "What am I doing in this world?" over and over we now have the technology to answer that question.

Synchronised Swimming

Well, this thread has lead me to discover that I lead a double life; I am, by day, a normal eighteen year old and, by night, a champion synchronised swimmer. There is also some possibility that I am a blonde who enjoys shopping, and has a frighteningly spangly Myspace layout.

Luckily, the only actual reference to me is from my old secondary school's website, and is something to do with my GCSE results.

I thought this meant

People stopped asking others stupid questions and instead opened Google themselves. Like that's ever going to happen.

I do it all the time!

It's kinda fascinating really. I use just to see how waves of the internet ocean bob up and down with hits. Too it's a really fun to watch how all the comments I leave everywhere take on lives of their own and start popping up on servers all over the world.

Re:Deja Vu

No, you're mistaken....Nothing to see here, move along....

Re:Deja Vu

didn't I just see this story the other day?

Yes, but only because Slashdot has started googling itself for stories to post.

Re:Weird

Stormtrooper #5, is that you?! I love your work!!

Re:Deja Vu

Talk about deja vu, on my second look, I saw:

People were to like Google more this year...

Re:I am the Zigurd

Off topic? Seriously?

Here's a topic: There is a sense-of-humor deficit out there. On another thread (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=374665&cid=21521813 [slashdot.org]) I posted a comment about how LinkedIn is a MySpace for resume polishers and I actually get a response how that's not completely accurate. At least that comment got modded up. And now this "off topic" thing?

Re:Of course I google myself...

Bring on Hawaiian shirt day!