I pop up quite a bit, given my professional activities.
First name, Middle name, Last name: Page 1, third entry. (The first two links are to very similar names from Scotland.)
First initial, Middle name, Last name (the combination I use in court): Page 1, first entry, plus four more entries out of the 10 on page 1 (The others link to very similar names in Scotland).
First initial, Second initial, Last name (the combination I use for articles): Page 1, 7th entry, a legal paper that cites a paper I wrote - Yay! (Plus some links to people in Scotland … a pattern is emerging…)
Nickname for Middle name, Last Name: Whole lot of Facebook, MySpace and professional pages for people with the same combo (plus, a guy standing in the upcoming general elections for the UK Independence Party, whatever that is?), but nothing about me.
Northern Piper: lots of links to the Northern Piper Aviation Co. in Alaska; one link to the Northern Pipers uillean piping club in Minnesota; one link to a post I made some years ago on a bagpiping forum; and a link to my recent thread here on the SDMB about wikipedia etiquette.
First Last (which is what I go by): the first three entries and about half the first page.
First Middle Last (which is my legal name but which I never use): there are 4 entries total, all of them me. (I have no idea why one of them shows up, as it doesn’t use my middle name at all.)
First M. Last (which I also never go by but did for a while back in high school): two entries on the first page, one of them a letter to an editor I wrote in 1975 when, apparently, I was still using the initial in formal situations.
And “Ulf the Unwashed,” 2 or more references on page 1.
First hit, even without the quotes. And apparently I’ve been doing too many vanity searches, since three letters into my last name is enough to bring me up on the auto-complete.
My name appeared as the first entry, primarily because of the relative rarity of participants in the field in which I am best known. Anyone who is searching in that topic will be directed to sites where I am the major contributor.
I do have the same name as several prominent people, and they mostly show up on the first page. Included are sports figures and other science types.
“Shortened first name + Last Name” = I’m the 2nd hit (facebook) and plenty of the next few pages are me, or direct paternal relatives with the same combo.
“Real first name + Last Name” = None before getting bored (5ish pages)
“First + middle + last” = Only one hit, not me.
“Dope Handle” = Mostly me (though I think google is tweaking it some based on my results I’ve used - would still mainly be me)
Firstname Lastname: 897 hits. The first entry that does not relate to me appears on page four. My professional webpages, my teaching webpages, scientific papers, papers citing my papers, scientific collaborations, lists of conference attendants …
With “Firstname Lastname” I’m the fourth hit. Number three is a namesake that I have never met, but strangely enough I have exchanged some e-mails with his daughter.
When I searched for “Floater” I gave up on the twentieth page with no hit. Combining it with the name of the organisation where it was bestowed upon me I was hit #11.
None of them on the front page are about me, mostly because I have the same name as a third-rate comedian. One or two are about somebody else, including a black guy. I didn’t know there were black people with my last name, since it’s rather Irish-sounding.
It’s all me. All of it, and there’s much more of it out there since I was on Jeopardy (most of which boils down to ‘pretty, but stupid.’) As far as I know, I’m the only ‘Gila [Lastname]’ in the whole world.
Googling ‘Gila [Mr. GilaB’s Lastname]’ is all me also. I use his last name socially in our community to make him happy, and when signing things in both of our names, he always uses only his last name. I think I’m the person in the world of that name, as well.
The second hit for GilaB is me on Chowhound, with the less-linked SDMB only showing up on page 2, but for a long time, it was just gastrointestinal labs, graphics and imaging labs, and things in Turkish.
“First name, middle name, last name”: My grandmothers obituary is the only result
“first name, last name”: I got to page four and quit. None of them were me. Mostly some attorney in another state.
“first name, middle initial, last name”:first result was a people search page that had my name and the town I live in. They wanted money for more info.
“Last name, first name, middle initial”:Only two results. One was a vital records site with information on my marriage. The other was, ironically, information about my divorce.
My SDMB user name: Almost all me!
First Middle Last: Nothin’
First M. Last: One hit, and it’s me. On a publication of a petition I signed a few years ago.
First Last: Halfway down the first page on my wife’s genealogy page.
Abbreviated-First Last: My Facebook page is the first hit.
SDMB Handle: Halfway down the first page, on FCOD’s Mafia Wiki. =P
Other Gaming Handle: Not visible on the first several pages, as I’m totally swamped out (as it’s my grandmother’s maiden name that just sounds cool) by my three cousins who are a decent writer, a polka DJ, and a halfway decent country artist.
For “First name last name” I come up with my Twitter (which I never ever use) at the bottom of page 14.
There’s someone moderately more famous and all 139 previous entries are about him.
I have a rather common name, so I don’t mind revealing it: James Cunningham. Googling “James [middle name] Cunningham” gives only nine unique hits, however, which is kind of surprising. The first hit pertaining to me is the seventh, which is a 2005 dean’s list; I’m also the person in the eighth and ninth.
As for “James Cunningham”, well … I stopped looking after 11 pages. I do recall as of eight or nine years ago I was near the top; I suppose the internet has exploded since then, and my online presence is lower in an absolute sense as well.
I get usnet posts from 1997 and before. The only other hit I get is from a site called “Social Diligence,” which links me to a job I haven’t had since 2003.
I get about 32,500 results. I am sure they are all me, because I have a very unusual last name, and no one else has the combination of that surname with my first and middle names. These are mostly links to my publications or interviews.
First, Last
I get 1,160 results. Almost all are me (at least the first 100 are); a few may be to my father and grandfather, who had the same first name but different middle initial.
The combination of my firstname+lastname is extremely unusual, and unique within the U.K., and my full name is globally unique. For the former combo I am not quite the first entry on [noparse]Google.com but am on Google.co.uk[/noparse]; for the latter, there is precisely one entry, which is me.