What does Google say about you?

I'm not on there at all under my real name. Which is just how I want it. My internet name is there cos of the forums I'm on.

Well my name brings up someone else's facebook and loads of people with my name as a middle name. Louise isn't that common of a first name then.

First link is a NHS Director of Performance and Organisational Development.
123people.co.uk link
linkedin.com profiles
Someone with my name who works at University of Cardiff teaching Chemistry.
And http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=ntt_a...-alias=books-uk&field-author=Louise Pritchard (one of the reasons I'm using a pen name besides me wanting to be anonymous with my writings funnily enough someone did ask me if I had published anything before because of this author).

Also sometimes it brings up my Amazon profile page which it shouldn't do as I have a different name on my profile page.

Google has ignored me - but hell, my husband and I share the same name so it ignores him also.

Most results for my name are some south-american soccer player (with a pretty good record, it seems). My nickname shows, among other things, a very vile and poisonous sporking of one of my earlier (terrible) jobs.

My name is so very common that I'm anonymous to Google. In other words, Googling my name produces some 47 million results. Maybe I'm in there, somewhere, maybe not.

There's apparently a lot more people out there with my name than there used to be...I'm only on the first page 3 times. One is a writer's critique site I used to frequent, one is an essay on Chinese popular religion I wrote when I was an undergrad, and one announces a grant I got way back when I was still working in molecular genetics. Besides that, I am apparently a chess player, a member of Phi Theta Kappa, going to Austria with a gulf coast community college, and have made a few comments on various people's obituaries in Florida and South Carolina...at least my name twins seem to be pretty cool people.

My chosen pen name, on the other hand, is pretty random - a few LinkedIn profiles, a travel agent in Thamesmead, and a blog post about a Parisian couturier who apparently fell off the map in 1933. Now just to get something published so I can take it over...

Anne Lyle said:

On Michael Carr's excellent "Ask the Agent" thread, he mentioned that he usually googles prospective clients' names to check they aren't too weird before offering representation.

On a serious note, it was a useful reminder that most of AW is crawled by Google, so many of the posts on here could end up on that search

However the thread was sidetracked by a discussion of weird stuff in general that pops up in the google results when you search on your name (or your writing pseudonym). Hence, I thought it deserved its own thread.

So - what does Google say about you?

Click to expand...

My writing name produces largely accurate info about me and my books. Searches for my every day name comes up with a few that relate to me but mostly are about other people with altogether more interesting lives and careers.

A girl in Ohio gets the first pages of hits for our name, thank goodness.

I do show up early in relation to a Flight 77 victim I knew; good to see that pages about her get viewed often, really.

My pen name comes up well in relation to that writing, so that worked well

My google goes to my LJ where in I talk a lot about dolls and occaionally writing. Then there are links to Barnes&Noble and Amazon, some OLD reviews of Avigon, and a list of convention appearences! Which I didn't know about but make me look a lot more important than I am.

All in all I am pleased. I have a pretty positive web presence. No nude pics or anything I did find a video interview of me I didn't know was there... Oh God I am a dork....

That I have an academia.edu, and a facebook page.

The academia part is fun. Every time someone searches me with my name, I get a notification. Not exactly worldwide popular, but I did have random people who started to follow my work because they liked the concept, and to whom I'm truly grateful.

And that's about it.

For my pen name, my blog comes up #4. A geographical location comes up most often, lol. The rest is other people, some writers, a lawyer. For my real name, several writers come up, one a prolific travel writer in my state, some criminals, some athletes, a couple of doctors and lawyers. For my maiden name, a doctor and lecturer in the UK has a ton of hits, along with an athlete in Australia.

I get a lot of stuff about a girl in Boston who has my same name. I knew of her when I was in kindergarten, actually, because her sister was in my class. She's very similar to me and it makes me jealous.

I'm changing my name to The The.

Pronounced "Teh Teh".

My first name is so unusual I used to joke that there were only 13 of us in the universe. However, the first half of it is a not uncommon male nickname. My last name is not common, either. If you google my full name the first hit is a writer of "dark, surreal wisdom fiction" with the nickname and the same unusual last name. If you google only my first name (not the male nickname) a fellow from San Francisco blogs under that name. I don't feel so alone anymore.

Anne Lyle said:

On a serious note, it was a useful reminder that most of AW is crawled by Google, so many of the posts on here could end up on that search

Click to expand...

In that case, I'm completely fucked.

kayleamay said:

I'm changing my name to The The.

Pronounced "Teh Teh".

Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_The

nothing good

google says I'm LIVIN

With my real name I don't get too much.... a couple facebook/Myspace/Linkin pages. Ironically none of them are me even though I have them also. Guess my name isn't all that uncommon so it's not shocking. Then a couple karate articles. Not much.

With my screen name I get some internet group/company that fills the first couple pages. Then I get a bunch of Pyrotechnics articles and forums....that's actually me.

Well, 48 people have my name, but only one in my area. One of them seems to be a scupltor, and there are several hits on Facebook. However, I was disturbed to see my current address and all members of my household listed. Scary, but I'm not surprised.

My full real name comes up with nothing at all. Just my first/last name comes up with tons of people who are not me.

My writing name comes up with me a lot, though. The first 17 pages of google results had at least some of them that were actually me, Effie Collins the horror writer. Some of them were women who've shared that name with me. One died back in 1897... and there are tons of death notices for that name all the way up to 1996. There's also one result that has an "Effie Collins" in it and it's from my local newspaper sometime last year. And it is not me. Which is weird. Really weird.

There are also results for me on Wikiname? I had no idea wikiname even existed. Effie apparently means well spoken. Too funny, considering the name Effie came about because one of the old members here thought it was silly to call me EF. And I eventually adopted it as my pseudonym.

There are also, apparently, several other places that have me listed as a writer of horror/dark fiction and poetry. With links to my stories and poetry. One is a site about Japanese Romance writers.

...

Dunno what to say about that. Never been to Japan. I do write the occasional romantic poem and have a couple of them published. Maybe that's what that's about?

Dunno. It was weird. I don't think I'll google myself for a while. This was disturbing.

Google says I'm a teenager on Facebook with a provocative user pic. Ugh.

There aren't alot of people in the world with my name. When I google myself it brings up my blog, websites selling my short story, interviews and reviews of my work, photos of me and sketches I've done. The only other person in the world with my name who comes up alot is some university teacher in America. I find those websites that gather personal information about people without permission a little disturbing. I'm on quite a few listed as "Writing Goddess" which is the name I have on a personal blog and I'm listed as an author or self employed.

My full name turns up a bunch of people who aren't me. They're very smart....a professor of mathematics and science and a counselor are at the top of the list. But nothing scandalous that I can see.