Using Google to Find Information about People

[spectastic]

you can keep track of that stuff by seeing how many hits your linkedin gets.

[unræd]

I don't come up in a search of myself, because I keep a very low online profile, and because there's a college football player with my name who eats up most of the results (as well as one very distinguished soil scientist).

 

If you narrow the search to include my current institution, there's another undergraduate here with my exact same (not at all common) name, first and last. He maintains an active twitter feed--there's nothing per se objectionable about it, but there are also things about it that certainly aren't professional/what I would want adcomms to see.

 

Sigh.

[shadowclaw]

I haven't googled myself in ages! A search of my (new) married name (with middle initial) just turns up a few pages on ResearchGate, a blog entry from my department discussing a project that one of my committee members is doing (which I helped collect data for), and a facebook review for my favorite pizza place. Searching without my middle initial is a bit more informative, with results for ResearchGate, my facebook, my wedding registry, and several department blog posts with my name in them for projects I worked on.

 

Now my maiden name (with middle initial) turns up my ResearchGate profile, plus facebook profiles that aren't me, some grave records, and then some whitepages-type results for people that aren't me. If I google my maiden name without middle initial, I basically get all hits for someone who is into white lion conservation.

 

I wonder how detailed the adcomms would get when searching. Would they try adding my school names? There aren't too many results when you add my grad school, since I recently changed my name. There are some nice results with my maiden name and undergrad college.

[grad_wannabe]

this is scary....go thing there's another one of me that is a hardcore real professional and looks excellent on paper!

 

Funny enough, although my name (first, middle AND last) is really common, for some reason most us who share the name are hardcore academics. 

[Chai_latte]

I have a very uncommon name.  I'm probably the only person on the planet who has it.  A couple of years ago, my facebook account got hacked and a duplicate page was set up...with a scantily clad woman posing suggestively in the profile pic.  UGHH...

I only realized it recently when someone was trying to friend me and could only find the duplicate/fake page.  Of course, I requested that FB take the page down, but they ignored my request.  

Anyway, that's one of the entries associated with my name.