Self-googling

Thursday 10 April 2003This is over 21 years old. Be careful.

Jake Howlett wrote about self-googling (which he accurately describes as vain). Googling on his whole name, then his last name, and finally his first name, he was first, second, and 27th in the respective listings.

When I tried the same experiment, I was struck by how similar my results were: I’m the first Ned Batchelder, the second Batchelder (the first is actually a 404), and the 25th Ned. What does this mean about me and Jake? Or about blogs? Or about the web? Is this just a coincidence? What do other people get for similar queries?

Comments

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1, 2, and 43. Bizarre. ;-)
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What it means is that Google love blogs :) If you check your logs there's a good chance you'rebeing spidered by Google daily now (GoogleBot does that for frequently updated sites) and your PageRank will be high due to all the other high PageRank blogs linking in to you.
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And now that we have two Simon's here, how do the ranks compare?
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An amazing coincidence ;o)
The strange thing with Google is how often rankings change. I bet if I were to test it again it would be different just a few days later...
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1, 1, 48

No big surprise: unusual last name + common first name.
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1, 3, off the chart

No surprise I didn't rank with "Michael." Who isn't named "Michael" other than Simon, Jake and Ned? I think it definitely helps to have an unusual last name. It almost makes up for no one being able to spell or pronounce it correctly!
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1, 40, 149.

Another interesting thing to look at is, given your whole name (not quoted), how far down in the results do you have to look in order to find an entry that is *not* yours? For me, I finally found one at #72.
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Sylvain Galineau 2:26 PM on 11 Apr 2003
1 and every other hit (woo hoo).
1.
Who knows.
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First, 82nd and 119th.

Damn those Arthur Millers and Charles Schwabs.
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On the other hand, you get #1 for Charles Fishbowl or Fishbowl Miller, and #2 for just "Fishbowl". That's not bad at all ...
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14 by full name, but off the charts otherwise. Both my wife and my 12 year old daughter came up sooner than I did by their full names. By last name, Randal Schwartz came up first and by first name Richard Stallman came up first -- both quite understandable. A drinking game that I (barely) remember from college came up in the last name search ;-)

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