Apparently, I was shooting porn.
Decades ago.
But if anyone tried to check me out online, they’d have to wade through pages of this guy and his taxidermist cousin before they got to me.
Twenty years ago a Yahoo search on my name produced only results that were really me. Mostly Usenet and bloggy type postings. I don’t think “blog” was a word yet. My personally developed web-page on my employer’s website would show up as #1 or #2. We were each given a space on our company’s web server in 1995 (about 10,000 people) to create our own profile pages. Only a few hundred bothered. You used Notepad (mockingly called “Visual N++”) to create the page. There was a cursory review by Legal and PR, and boom, you were live on the World Wide Web.
Now the whole first page is other people. There are a couple of semi-famous people (one media person, one artist) with the same name. The only references that include me are the links to lists of LinkedIn and Facebook members with my name, and I’m at least on the first page of each of those. My profile was on our company’s recruitment page for a while a couple of years ago. I got about three whole days of “help” to create and perfect four lines of content.
Yes. Because I married a “famous” author and researcher in a microscopically small field of interest; and because I subsequently divorced him and reverted to my unusual maiden name – I have quite a few references on Google. The first 2 1/2 pages (depending on what typesize your browser is using, I guess) are quite accurate.
Tried it again on my iPhone; got 10 hits.
1,2,3 and 6 are me.
4,5, and 7 are Scottish travel agencies.
8 is the LinkedIn page for someone in Britain named Linda Mylastname-Myfirstname who is apparently exploring “new career opportunities” i.e. needs a job.
9 is an old advert for a Christmas performance in Toronto last year.
10 is a memorial page for Sgt Mylastname Myfirstname, Canadian Army, deceased after WWII.
The first thing it does is change the spelling of my first name and search on that, after I click the correct spelling and make it search that I get reviews a namesake has left for hairdressers first and second and my listing on www.thepeerage.com is sixth
Leaving out my middle name gives me pages of hits about an American actress with a different spelling even though it claims to be searching my spelling.
No images of me come up either way
My father’s and uncle’s obituaries show up on the same search, too … just further into the search.
I used to date a man who has the same last name as a well-known coach, and all the links, as far as I went, were for the coach even though they don’t have similar first names either. AFAIK, they are not related.
It is very difficult to google me for two reasons:
- My name, while not common, is the same as an Old Testament prophet, you have to tread through a lot of wrong hits, millions to find me.
- I’m not very Google-worthy, my accomishments are not very interesting or singular.