If I use DuckDuckGo, I get a financial analyst, and my cousin whose full name is James Hershele Ostropoler.
If I use Google, especially if I’m logged in, of course I get myself.
Even when logged into Google, on Chrome, the first real reference to me by name is on the third or fourth page of results and is a page from my junior school’s website, mentioning a prize I won at age 10.
On the other hand, using the nickname I use here, even a beginner could nail down my real name, location etc in about 5 minutes.
Somehow, since being online from the early pre-interwebs, I’m totally anonymous except for an old LinkedIn profile. I used to pop up more from newsletters from a local soccer league and some other hobby groups, but those have fallen off apparently.
The image results are quite amusing, probably cross-overs from shared first or last names with the rest of the world. I get a badger, Liv Tyler, and a World of Warcraft raid screenshot among my first 10 images.
A gut wrenching discovery, no doubt!
I keep a pretty low profile online and have a name that, while not really common, is at least uncommon enough that the number on the www obfuscates my info pretty well.
First plus Last = a ton of fan fiction for two characters in popular media (one has my first name, the other my last). I still show up at #3 on the Google list. The rest is… disturbing.
First plus Middle Initial plus Last = I own the front page.
All the time. It turns out I wrote a software manual that I didn’t know about.
I’m also a dead Canadian.
My name is the equivalent of “Jane Smith” and there are so many people with my same name – even with the same middle initial – I couldn’t even find a link to myself after about five or six pages and I just gave up. I think this is terrific because the next time I go job hunting, at least I won’t not get a job because of some nonsense on social media or a blog or something. It does make me worry about identity theft, however. I’ve taken many calls from debt collectors who just searched on my name and was looking for one of the other ones.
Anyway, there is a highly hated judge in Philadelphia who is dragging our name through the mud, and I don’t appreciate that shit one bit. I should email her and be like, settle down honey, you’re screwing it up for all of us who share this name.
There’s also at least one author with my name and I happen to have writing/journalism in my background as well, so it’s possible that people who knew me years ago might think they’ve found me, but they haven’t. I have not published a book at all.
I have never met anyone with my exact name. My first name is never one of the most popular but it is far from unusual. My last name is similar. I don’t run into someone with the name every day but it is common enough to be easily recognizable. Combine the two and I’ve never found myself on Google. If I start being very specific with other search terms I can get some work related news articles. Just using my first and last I find a not popular outside of academia professor who is well published and some lawyers. And quite a few obituaries.
Yes, I’ve googled myself. It’s good to make sure there’s nothing too wild that comes up should a search committee google me when job hunting.
It’s particularly important because to the best of my knowledge, I am the only person out there with my first name and the particular spelling of my very unusual last name. I know of at least two people out there with my first name and a variation of my last name (1 letter in one case, 2 letters in the other). One of those is actually in the same profession as me, but has started in that more recently - when you google her, I come up in the results, but when you google me, she doesn’t come up until later.
May I say, you write remarkably well for one.
I share first and last name with some financial bigwig with a ton on hits.
Full name w/ MI has fewer than 50 hits. All are either work related (published cases in which I was atty of record or legal/governmental staff listings) or those “people finder” things.
Not aware of any pics of me on-line.
No, because I already know who I am, what I’ve done and what I look like.
When I google myself I find myself, and also a guy with the same first and last name who is a lawyer in North Carolina. This guy attended the same university as me at the same time and I would get phone calls for him. I first discovered he existed when I got a an application for student aid, which I hadn’t requested. It already had my (his) name and SSN filled out, but the middle initial and SSN were wrong.
Several years ago I answered a phone call with a number didn’t recognize.
“Hi. This is Irene Isaacman, are you the Candide that went to RTFCHS?”
“I sure am, Irene. How have you been?”
Well, I’m good. Did you know you’re the only Candide in th e country?"
“Of course, Irene, I google myself, too.”
I’m buried in a cemetery in Minnesota. It doesn’t seem to be slowing me down much though.
It just keeps coming up with the Zeppelin song… 
There’s a surprising number of lawyers with my name. Maybe I missed my calling?
I’m a dentist in Michigan, a marketing director in Connecticut, a chiropractor in California, a doctor in Illinois and a former cricket star in England. In my own state I have met myself 3 times, a folk singer from Olympia, at the time a Burger King employee and a felon incarcerated at the Monroe Reformatory. Met the singer at a show at a small town arts and crafts show, the burger flipper after a collection agency came after me because of bad checks he wrote and the felon in court after he stole my identity to obtain a driver’s license with my address but his picture. Don’t really consider my name to be all that common either.
I have a very common last name (in the top five) and a very common first name (usually in the top ten), so searching using that information brings me over 220,000,000 hits, including a semi-famous British actor. Wrapping that in double quotes reduces that to 419,000.
If I input my full name, without quotes, I get 491,000 hits, including hits mentioning people with my first name and their last name is the same as my middle name, plus someone else with my last name. Putting double quotes around that reduces the number to 8, including one listing Firstname Middlename, who lives on Lastname Road. The rest are me, things that you would expect to find if you were doing my background check on Google: address, age, etc.
Despite the fact that my first and middle names are extremely common English boy’s names, and my last name is not exactly rare, Googling my name in quotes only brings up about 1,800 links, almost all of which are to relatives (including probably the Ripper related one - he’s from the right area of England to be part of the family). Likely because this combination of names shows up repeatedly in my family genealogical records in each generation (e.g. my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather also had this name).
I sell inspirational posters and prints online and I’ve authored several gift books,
so my name comes up often in connection with those.