Self-googling

Thursday 10 April 2003 — This is close to 22 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

Simon 4:38 AM on 11 Apr 2003

1, 2, and 43. Bizarre. ;-)

Simon Willison 4:44 AM on 11 Apr 2003

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.

Ned Batchelder 6:16 AM on 11 Apr 2003

And now that we have two Simon's here, how do the ranks compare?

Jake Howlett 7:55 AM on 11 Apr 2003

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...

Mike Gunderloy 12:49 PM on 11 Apr 2003

1, 1, 48

No big surprise: unusual last name + common first name.

Michael Braly 1:41 PM on 11 Apr 2003

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!

Doug Landauer 2:08 PM on 11 Apr 2003

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.

Sylvain Galineau 2:26 PM on 11 Apr 2003

1 and every other hit (woo hoo).
1.
Who knows.

Charles Miller 8:55 PM on 11 Apr 2003

First, 82nd and 119th.

Damn those Arthur Millers and Charles Schwabs.

Doug L. 12:53 AM on 12 Apr 2003

On the other hand, you get #1 for Charles Fishbowl or Fishbowl Miller, and #2 for just "Fishbowl". That's not bad at all ...

Richard Schwartz 8:29 PM on 18 Apr 2003

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 ;-)

Self-googling

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