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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)."
how many knew enough to put it in quotations?
FYI: I don't know what you guys are talking about half the time.
people were always more likely to ___________ themselves this year
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
I have done a few searches on myself, just to see what comes up.
Absolutely nothing comes up on Google when I search myself. I am always amazed how much info people will put on the internet (blogs, facebook and so forth) then be shocked when those college binge drinking from a beer-bong pictures show up somewhere.
My theory: If it might be potentially embarrassing to you in the future, don't put it on the internet. Plain and simple.
I've been googling myself at a pretty steady frequency since about the time I turned 13!
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
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.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
Apparently I'm not a writer but a prolific techno god in Russia. This is exciting news.
I much prefer having other people google me. So much more satisfying.
Yes, but only because Slashdot has started googling itself for stories to post.
How do they know that people are googling themselves??????
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> Absolutely nothing comes up on Google when I search myself.
Congratulations! It looks like you are not notable.
> If it might be potentially embarrassing to you in the future, don't put it on the internet.
Believe it or not, some people are subject to scrutiny by others. These people, that we sometimes term "successful" or "interesting", are sometimes commented on by others.
usually find some interesting stuff, and google images always has the best pics of me. (SafeSearch is Off)
I happen to "google" myself in the shower every morning, but it's not exactly newsworthy.
So I have. So, how many people googled themselves after reading this post?
Exactly, it is considered perfectly legal for potential employers to not hire somebody due to the results of a google.
Personally my name only shows up once for anything that I can identify as being me in the first 6 or so pages of any of the combinations of my first middle and last names. And I like it that way, it used to show up 5 or 6, right now it only shows up once at my alma mater. And I suspect that they'll probably lose that after a while as lab partners from 2003 isn't something that is terribly important 5 years later.
I prefer to be ungoogleable. This way there is very little that anybody would be able to find out about me that I don't know about.
Self Googling will make you blind.
They did a phone survey and just asked people.
Cmdr Taco googling himself would come up with 5 million references to "Lame". :P
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Michael Bolton, is that you??
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
Sometimes people are logged in to their iGoogle homepage. Then they search for a name that just so happens to match the one on their account. Google, being ever-so-crafty, figures out that they must be Googling themselves.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
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.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.