Blog post 4: Googling Myself

The last time I googled myself I was absolutely horrified to find that the first few things that popped up were my old MySpace and Xanga accounts, which I hadn't used or even thought about in years. I quickly deleted both of those accounts, hoping to get rid of all traces of my embarrassing early high school memories from the Internet. This time, I'm very relieved to see that neither of those showed up in my Google search. The first few links that came up are Facebook pages of other Alex Willigs – I had no idea my name was that common. In fact, my own Facebook page did not even show up, yet a Facebook group that I am a part of did. I’m not sure whether this has to do with my privacy settings or not. I know that I am searchable on Facebook, but I do have it set to private so that only my friends can see my page.

Most things that popped up were related to other people with the same name. However, my twitter account and old local newspaper articles from high school tennis did show up. I switched over to Google images and found that a few of my Facebook default pictures are there, but none of my tagged pictures. There were also a few pictures from tennis but for the most part, the pictures seemed to be of random people I have never seen before.

It’s kind of a relief that there are plenty of other people out there with my name because googling myself turns out to be pretty inconclusive. None of my past jobs or internships turned up and either did anything about school or where I live. I know that the Internet makes everyone searchable and you can find out some pretty invasive things about people but so far, my Google record looks pretty clean/sparse.

Blog post #4: Googling myself

Like others, I'll admit to having Googled myself before. The first result is my Twitter page, followed by a specific tweet on Bo Ryan. I know that one was retweeted, so that probably factors into it being so high. Following that, there's an option to view more of my tweets. After that, it's my profile page on SB Nation (sports blog network) and some other pages from it.

Then, we get into the Facebook stuff. First was my own profile, followed by a few of my "friends." I use quotes because they're people from high school I actually haven't spoken to since, well, high school. A few groups and pages also come up.

Following that, my Badger Herald stuff comes up, with two links showing and then another "show more results" option. I also have a Vimeo account that I don't really use, so that came up. At the bottom of my results was a link for "news for mike fiammetta," with the first hit being my column for today's paper.

I'm fine with this stuff being on Google and showing up first because it's mostly stuff I'd want people Googling me to find. For jobs, I'd be sending in a lot of these samples anyway, so it's good that they come up right away.

What is kind of funny/weird is that on image search, my mug from the Herald and my Facebook profile picture show up. I guess that just shows the power of Google. The rest of the pics are mostly from stories I've written. After that, there's a lot of pics of Tony Fiammetta, fullback for the Carolina Panthers (no relation) and a bunch of other random ones.

Blog post #4

Well I "googled" myself and came up with some funny results. First off, the first six links were to sites associated with either this class or my CA 272 class (which required all students to start a twitter account). Thankfully my twitter account is not available for all to see and I'm pretty sure no one can see my blog posts on this site without logging in. Some of the other links were to facebook groups that I have been a member of, such as "the retro cubs appreciation society", which is a group my friend McGee started so we could relive the cubs glory days by posting goofy pictures of players we grew up rooting for in the mid 90's. I also found a link on the second page on google to some of my football statistics over the years in high school. As expected zeros across the board, not many statistics needed for a center. Since my last name isn't very common there are also links to family members web pages who share my last name. Overall I have mixed feeling about my information being available on google. It's strange to think that random groups I am a member of on facebook are on there, however I don't mind if a link to my high school newspaper with me in it shows up. Basically anything that I feel I have willingly put into the "webisphere" as public I have no problem with, yet when things are displayed on searches that were never intended to be public, it's a little weird.

Blag Post #4 Googling Google

Let me preempt this post with a story. Last semester I had interviewed with SC Johnson and everything went well, so they sent me an acceptance letter, but, they sent it to the wrong email address: andrewbutts@gmail.com instead of andrewdbutts@gmail.com. With nothing more than a "go badgers" comment to go off of, the andrew butts who received my acceptance letter, googled the badgers, found the wisc website, people searched me, found my email address and forwarded me the letter. We then started an amusing penpalling conversation which revealed a most interesting philosophy, rather than considering himself the "real" andrew butts and others as "imposters," he considered himself just another Andrew Butts in a league of extraordinary Andrew Butts's and then sent me a link to yet another Andrew Butts that is one of Enterprise's Success Stories. Long story short, I'm not the only Andrew Butts out there, my penpal is a software engineer at pixar and the other guy is a regional HR manager at Enterprise. Trying to find vestiges of myself was difficult as I keep my privacy locked down on social media. I would suggest trying to find yourself on Spokeo though too, as it's all about invading your privacy. I fortunately cannot be found on there either.

http://www.spokeo.com/search?q=Andrew%20Butts#Wisconsin
http://picturesofsuccess.enterprise.com/myStoryC.asp?story=111

googling myself.

Nothing really surprising when I googled myself today. I've been known to join every new website available to me so basically it was just a bunch of my profiles on random sites came up.

The first thing that came up was this blog, which I'm sure has to do with the fact that blogger is owned by google. Then there was a list of things I'd posted on facebook. However, they were not things from my personal page but only posts I had made on public pages like bands and public groups. In fact, my actual profile didn't show up at all.

I tried googling my real name (Elizabeth rather than Liz) and there was only 5 total results, as opposed to the 2,390 I got using my nickname. Being that my last name also has 3 words in it, I think there could be a lot more relating to me if I were to mess with the spacing of my name. If someone didn't know me or understand my name, it would probably be tricky for them to find out my phone number or anything of that sort from google.

All in all, none of it really phased me. I know some people are completely freaked out that anyone can type your name into google and see stuff about you but it doesn't bother me. Nothing I clicked relating to my name search was anything I wouldn't tell someone if they asked me. I know a lot of people say to be careful about what you put on the internet because future employers might find it but I didn't find anything incriminating but then again, I can't really think of anything I've done that would be.