Have You Ever Googled Yourself?

23/04/09 posted by

Towards the end of last year I met this boy. After informing my mother about my new love interest, she joked around and asked if his father was a B-grade celeb from the nineties. Not seeing the joke or the humour, I answered “Yeah, that’s his Dad.”

“He was such a babe back in his day” my mother reminiscently replied. And as for me, I had no clue who he was, or what the big deal was. I had to find out.

Google: “Gary Sweet”

‘So, he is that guy off Stingers? Got it.’ Subsequently there was a link to his son. I learnt a few things that maybe might not have been the most attractive things for him to divulge to me personally.

Having had such successful results so far, I thought ‘why not google all of my friends?’ My friendship group is made up of a selection of actors and musicians so I was sure there would be something about them. The results were in; some accurate, some not so accurate and some that were just weird. (Fanclub in Switzerland?!)

This got me thinking… would Google be able to trawl through the internet to find any information about Natalie Dodds that is actually about me?

Curiosity won me over. I Googled myself. The results were mostly not me however there was a link to my MySpace and Facebook page. Decent enough for a regular nobody I guess.

Luckily for me “Natalie Dodds” isn’t a name that is very common. Sure, I’m not the only one, but if I were to have a name like “John Smith” not only would it be almost impossible to find information about myself on Google, I probably wouldn’t be on very good terms with my parents.

Google have recently launched a new feature called Google Profiles. Basically, your Google Profile, is an outlet for you to control how you present yourself on Google products to Google Users.

In your Google Profile, you simply provide your name, nicknames, a bio – as much, or as little information as you feel comfortable with. Obviously, it is best to keep in mind that anyone in the world can see this. Your Google Profile also gives you the opportunity to link people to other websites which can be used to promote your business’ website, direct people to your twitter feed or increase traffic to your blog.

So, I put the question to you… Have you ever Googled yourself? If you haven’t, I bet you do it right now.