SNGF: Google Yourself

At first I was hesitant to join in on Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun since I didn't see much of a point in Googling myself (or an "ego search" as it has been called). I do have Google Alerts turned on for both my name and GeneaBloggers which helps me fight the good fight in terms of blog content theft and copyright violations.


But this morning as I went through all the blog posts from close to 500 genealogy blogs (yes, we are coming up to that high water mark!), I could see that not only was this week's SNGF just plain fun for some folks - they actually found relevant genealogy information!


So here is Randy's original directive:


1. Google yourself at www.google.com. Put your first name, middle initial and last name, plus the name of your city or town in the Search box to see what other persons may have mentioned you online, or to see which blog aggregators are "collecting" you.


2. Then go to the "Images," "Videos" and "News" links and see what they show.


3. Tell us about any surprises you found, either in your blog or in Comments to this post.


And here are my results:


1. I used "thomas macentee chicago" and came up with 149,000 hits. However, as you progress to the following screen for more search results, the number of hits keep dropping. It appears that Google then accounts for duplicates. So there are 850 base hits without duplicates or related searches.


Interestingly when you start to use Boolean operators as in "thomas +macentee +chicago" the number of hits drops down to 30,000 with base of 489.


I am not sure if using Chicago in my searches is acurate - this is not my hometown, I've only lived here for the past five years and I have a much longer history in California and New York.


2. Images shows 7,990 entries with many being from my blog posts or professional sites like LinkedIn. There are no tawdry photos or anything with black bars across the eyes or any body parts. Thanks footnoteMaven for not releasing those photos from Jamboree and that wee little incident. LOL.


Videos shows only two entries and they both seem to be a MSNBC piece with some named Tom McEntee. Sorry not me.


News fails to show any entries for the past 30 days (thank goodness) although the archives for all dates shows 401 entries. However keep in mind that I really have no history with Chicago past 2004 and many of those 401 articles are for the surname McEntee not MacEntee.


3. There were no real surprises for someone like me who has a heavier web presence than the average person. I am also not surprised with the results if I add the various cities where I've lived besides Chicago.