Last week, at a social gathering, someone told me that they had googled me. I had not googled myself for a while so last night I thought I’d look and see what comes up. Wow!  Lots of information is floating around out there.  Some was accurate, some not so much so. I have a common name therefore there are other people, like doctors, with the same name. Interspersed with my art, photography, interviews and blogs were web sites and reviews of psychologists etc.  Maybe one of them will google themselves and end up analyzing me.

I’m not sure what I think about all this.  “Images” brought up some of my photography but there were a lot of pictures that someone else by the same name took that I didn’t think were so hot. My photography web site did come up so if someone was actually interested they could go there. It listed one of my relatives as my husband’s X-wife . . . not! Another listed my ex-husband’s age as 102 . . . not!

Next I googled my husband and only found one reference to him.  His name is very common so almost all the references were to other people. So I tried the four kids. Some facebook and a minimal amount of other information came up much of it about other people with the same or similar names.  A year ago not too much came up on me either but since that time I started this blog and an additional web site. 

The point to all this? Most of us have a digital footprint and internet presence. We may not be aware of what’s out there and what opinions are being formed by that information.  Fortunately, the person that googled me saw things she considered favorable.  As an artist, I want people to know what I do and see samples of my work. I’m careful not to put anything too personal out there. I never post things on facebook that could prove embarrassing to me or others. As far as this blog is concerned, my actual name is not associated with it although many of the followers know it’s me.  There is bound to me inaccurate information from time to time. So I suggest that we all google ourselves every now and then so we know what other people are seeing. If you see something that concerns you there are sites that will give advice on internet presence management.

Happy weekend.