...and would you know if you had been? Do you know where your name pops up on the magic list of search results?
A friend from another country wrote me not long ago and said, “Wow, you’ve been really busy!” I had actually been quite busy writing, but I had no idea what she was talking about being as our communication is not all that regular and we do live in separate parts of the world. Upon further inquiries, I found out that she was up late one night with nothing better to do, and had ‘Googled’ me.
Curiosity got the better of me. Ughhhh, why did I have to look! I found myself suddenly making way for a clean tab as I began typing my own name in the [search] bar. Within a second I’m already not impressed. My findings were absolutely unnerving! I was shocked, unhappy and felt completely invaded!
Every club I’d ever joined, no matter how briefly, as well as every forum I swear I’ve ever participated in, showed up in the search results. It’s a good thing I haven’t said or done anything I’m ashamed of, or would be embarrassed to have the-world-according-to-Google know about.
I think for me, the icing on the cake was the fact that I had recently signed up for a free membership to a well-known company’s online bookstore. I was in need of a more efficient delivery method as new books are very difficult to get in my part of the world. I filled out only my name and thought I would leave the billing information et el, for when I actually placed an order. On my part, good thinking and note to self.
Upon my self-imposed search, Google finds ‘me’ and has listed (with the permission of the book company no doubt) my entire profile, which as I mentioned, did not add up to much, but that’s hardly the point.
The Google results for the book company:
New Member. 
0 reviews. 0 lists. 1 friend. 0 favorites. 0 posts. 0 groups. Can you say looser!? Why does the rest of the world need to know I signed up for a better book delivery system? What purpose can this possibly serve the rest of you?
The other NINE pages, yes NINE, of search results were filled with old jobs, volunteer work and other miscellaneous crap that is completely irrelevant to the function of a healthy society, yet Google holds this information close at cache…449 results in 0.14 seconds of closeness to be exact.
Does simply existing now a day mean we are somehow fair game for indexing with or without our permission? I realized in mere tenths of a second that privacy factors are not even an issue for most companies and social media sites who are obligated to protect users (to some degree), let alone a bookstore. Social networking, advertising and the placement of Google search results have officially trumped the respect and privacy of all living and non-living people.
My first instinct was probably normal. How do I delete this stuff? Well, apparently it is possible but with a mild-level of difficulty and a lot of time. Over and over again the general rule of deletion is to contact the webmaster of the site you wish to be removed from. Okay, easier said than done, so I continue to [search] for options that are more direct and possibly faster.
These were my results:
- How to easily remove information from Google cache
- How to remove false information about yourself from the internet
- Remove a page or a site from Google’s search results, etc.
…in 0.17 seconds, there were 540,000,000 search results on how to regain ones privacy from the internet. Once again, it looks like I’m not alone.
