Googling Myself

My top hit on Google when I search my name is my Facebook profile page. In bold caps it reads Ben Roif is on Facebook, friend him. I clicked the link and Facebook allows me to view my profile, even though I was already logged onto my account at the time, as if I was someone else who didn’t know me. I was taken back about how accessible my account was, my online life was, to the anyone just one Google search away. I’ve never, until this search, thought about changing my privacy settings I just wrongly assumed only my friends had access to all my pictures and comments. As I’m on my profile as someone that’s logged out Facebook has a side bar to the right of my profile and Facebook ask me if I would like to change my privacy settings. I immediately switched to an option that no one from Google could search my name and have Facebook related items come up. As connected as I am on my social media sites I still am at a point where I don’t want to fully be accessible to anyone.

Besides what I saw on Facebook not a lot surprised me. Under my social media sites were all my past high school sports stats rosters and videos, all things I expected.

I guess the one thing that surprised me was how unique my name was. It seemed by looking through the first few pages of my Google search that I was the only one name Ben Roif searchable on Google.

Googling Myself

It was interesting googling my name, because I have a legal name and a "common" name. When I googled my common name, the name everyone knows me by, the typical search results came up. My Facebook, Google+, and Twitter account all showed up, which was cool and creepy at the same time. There was also a LinkedIn profile, but that must have been some other Jerry Mao in the world, and not me. I then googled my legal name, Guangyuan Mao, and nothing related to me came up. Almost everything was related to Chinese companies with similar names, or a tourist attraction in China that is actually called Guangyuan. I then googled for any pictures, and luckily, no pictures of me in either names showed my actual face. Overall, I am able to be found through my common name, although no pictures were to be found of me (just other random asian faces). It seems as I do not have as much online presence as others do, which is good and bad.

Google Search- Sammy Luterbach

I haven't Googled myself for a really long time, so when I did it for this blog post, I was pretty surprised to see how many things popped up. My Google+ information showed up on the very right side of the screen, but the first thing on the list was a link to the images that were attached to my name. They were mostly images that I put on my personal blog or photos from my CollegeFashionista internship. I felt pretty weird about seeing all of the images of me even though I had personally put them online. I guess I never made the connection that everything was so freely linked to my name. I block all of my photos on Facebook in an attempt to be more private, but I never really think about how anyone can search my name is see so many personal photos.

After that were links to my Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest accounts, which I wasn't surprised to see. I feel fine about those being available for everyone to see, because I either don't have personal information on them or have privacy settings how I want them to be. Then I came across a lot of articles I have written for various internships which I was expecting. Weird things to see were obscure comments I've made on YouTube videos or articles and also strange websites that were somehow linked to articles I have written.

After everything pertinent to me, I started to come across things that had to do with family members, mostly cousins who are around my age, who share my last name.

Blog Post 4-Google Search of Myself

So when I Googled myself I found mostly what I thought I would find but some surprising things as well.

The first thing I saw on the web results page was a picture of myself saying "1 personal result". It stated it was a limited profile so I'm assuming it was not publicly accessed.

The first link that came up was the homepage of Michelle Ruse who is a middle-aged woman at works at Iowa State University.

The next 2 links were about my profile on Facebook. These links only stated information that I securely provided for the public to see. Another link was on my LinkedIn Profile and stated information about my work experience and education.

Really, there was no information that I found that was inaccurate or inappropriate. The only surprising link that I found was a blog post that I did for a class last semester that was posted on the UW-Go Big Read blog. I thought this was kind of cool since I'm not really interactive in the online world outside of school and work.

All in all my Google search was successful and not too surprising.

Google Yourself

Today I googled myself.  What I found was not surprising. The first thing to show up in the results was a link to my Facebook page.  The second was a link to another Molly Diedrich on Facebook. I found that to be interesting as she is a college student as well.  The third link I found in the search results was my LinkedIn profile.

Now surprising.  Apparently I am a gymnast.  No idea if I am good or not but I most be doing okay as I have shown up in the results.  So if anyone knows anything about Gymnastics you should tell me how I am doing.

So I am not surprised that I didn't get narrowed results to all of my social networking sites.  I believe this is because I usually use Molly Marie Diedrich.  I googled myself again. Google then asked if I meant dietrich. No I meant Diedrich.  Gosh.

What I found by typing in my full name was a lot more.  But only in terms of Facebook. The first was again a link to my Facebook page.  The next result was odd because it was a link to an Event I had posted to back into 2011. I would guess that this showed up because it was a public Facebook Event that I commented on.  I'm glad to see that Facebook privacy terms are working.

I am surprised to say that my Twitter page did not come up. It did appear in a much later result.  I was surprised by that because I am very active on it.  I wonder if it may be because I have choose who may follow me.  But besides this, I didn't find anything that was too surprising.