If You Passed on Today, What Would Google Say?

[CowgirlUp]

I’m a nobody

 

[someday soon]

search my name and you come up with a jailed pedophile football coach...who is definitely not me, by the way.

In the Googling names dep't:

Story #1:
Early last year, I was randomly watching concert clips on YouTube, and as one band's members were being introduced on stage, I thought I heard an old 7th grade friend's unusual name announced...I had barely thought of him since my family moved away from the midwest in 1972. Was it really him in that band's video? I had to find out, so ( you guessed it! ) I googled around and found that he is indeed the band director for a music legend from the 60's who's still touring.
Better yet, I happened to get in touch with him when the band was in the middle of a US tour, and they also happened to be playing in my area ...he offered me free tix, so I got to see him doing his thing with the band that very night.

Story #2:
a few weeks ago, I scratched around online in a effort to find an old buddy of mine in 5th grade. He randomly crossed my mind after 50+ years and I thought I'd give it a go. He's got a very common name, so I had to dig pretty hard -- but I tracked him down and he was blown away when he received my email. Now we're in touch, exchanging pictures, and calling each other to say Hi now and then.

So hey, I'm grateful there were a few sprinkles of my old friend's names on the internet!

 

[gooddog]

A year or so ago I decided to place false information about myself on the internet...it reads: "......passed away secondary to an overdose of chocolate on national sandwich day in 2018. While his love of chocolate was his undoing, he is survived by his wonderful wife and cat." Evan has wrong addresses, just the way it should be. But, I could possibly OD on chocolate.

 

[blueskyk]

My name is the same as someone associated with a serial killer and I’m not easy to find in a google search. I hope to head for the exit without making much noise or fuss so this works for me.

 

[aja8888]

No one else has my name. I tried to find others that did, but I was not successful.

(I'm invisible)

 

[Rambler]

Hopefully, I’ve been out of the loop for long enough that google won’t even notice. As it stand, my name can be found all over the place in press releases, annual reports, speeches and panel discussions at WEF (some nice, some not so nice), etc., having been a senior and named executive for SEC purposes. I hate publicity though, and value my private life. Once I retired 8 years ago, I found a few new friends, and you know, had the “what do you/did you do” discussion. One of those friends googled me, and brought it up later. I felt somewhat self conscious about it. Frankly, I don’t even want a funeral or even an obituary, and I’ve told my wife (half seriously) that when I die, she should just put me on the curb in a Glad Bag.

 

[ProspectiveBum]

I deleted all social media except LinkedIn a couple of years ago, and there are both a professional athlete and college professor who share my name (which has a slightly unique spelling). They very nicely monopolize all the search results, preserving my anonymity. Fine by me!

 

[FI_RElater]

404 NOT FOUND

(...but actually there's still my papers, etc that are out there and being referenced by others even now. Otherwise, lower profile)

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

I very much value my privacy and would like to die that way, too. I have lived a pretty unremarkable life (as seen by others) and would like to die that way, too. For the most part, I don't go by my legal name and the name I do use is common enough that it would be difficult to dig up stuff on Google...not that I would really care.

As for searching in Google, if you put your name (or other search term) in quotation marks then you will probably get slightly different results.

Also, for those that don't want your FB profile on Google (or other search engines), there is (or was) an option to restrict that on the FB security settings.

 

[Car-Guy]

404 NOT FOUND

I like it.... Best answer so far....

 

[timbervest]

Hopefully, nothing.

However I share a name with a top college QB that is likely to be a high NFL draft pick so I got that going for me . . . which is nice.

 

[Walt34]

Who? Never heard of 'im.

I like it that way.

 

[marko]

Googling me would show my relation to my great-grandfather and my grandfather who were both wealthy and well known.

They'd likely both get a whole lot more ink in my obituary than I would myself.