I may live to regret asking such a dumb question, but curiousity wins out, so here goes:
When I am bored, I’ve been known to Google myself. My name is laughably common (let’s say “Susan Brown”) so if I just do a simple Google search it comes up with millions of hits, most of which are completely irrelevant. However, if I add an appropriate keyword (for example, “Egypt”) the number of sites is narrowed a lot.
What I find amazing is that if I google ‘“Susan Brown” Egypt’ there may be 600 or so hits, and the first 5 or 10 are always me.
Since I don’t subscribe to the “its all about me” world view, I don’t get it. Why shouldn’t, say, Susan Brown the equestrian who has a horse named Egypt show up before, say, a book review I wrote on Amazon that includes the word Egypt?
If Susan Brown the equestrian googled the same thing from her computer, would she get hits in the same order I do? Or would she get the ones relating to her first?
I can’t say for sure but you may be ignoring the obvious. Susan Brown may be a common name in the U.S. but it would be way more rare in Egypt wouldn’t? It very wel amy be that, of all the Susan Brown’s in Egypt, you are the one with the most references linked to you and therefore makes you at the top of Google rankings.
Both my wife and mother have somewhat common names and they are at the top of their name queries as well because they both appear it lots of books and other national media.
One way to be sure is to ask some friend or relative to Google your name from their computer.
The order of the list of results is determined by the site the words are on: the site’s relevance, value, geographical area and some other thingummies.
In other words: it’s mostly just a coincidence, but if you’re in Egypt (or aren’t you in HK now?), Google will bias its results towards Egyptian sites.
Thanks. So I guess in all likelihood, I come up first because (a) if you restrict the parameters carefully enough, then it actually is “all about me,” and (b) since I know the most trenchant keywords for myself, I’m using those parameters.
Yup, still in Egypt – and (although the Amazon example is a real one) the hits usually are often from sites based in Egypt.
(Funny you should ask about HK. We’re hoping to hear soon that we’ll be moving to Asia later this year. Too bad I’m the practical no-nonsense type – I’d like to take your comment as a portent that it’s gonna happen.)
I’ve a boring name that happens to appear in the Bible ( first and last name both Biblical ). I get 4, 280,000 hits on my name. I hit fourth, which is amusing since I’m a nobody but my name is “out there” because of what I do for a living.
The Egypt thing shouldn’t have surprised you. And, good luck on the move to Hong Kong ( jumpin’ on that Positive Thinkin’ Bandwagon for you !! )
One part of Google’s ranking algorithm is based upon the pages that link to a given page. For instance, the other Susan Brown might have links into her page from pages that use the word “horse” a lot, and almost no mentions of Egypt, while the pages linking into your page might use the word Egypt a lot, therefore raising your ranking when Egypt is in the search text.