Social Media

10 things Google knows about you

Recently I was asked the question, “What does Google know about me?” This person was concerned with their privacy and was interested in knowing what Google knows about them, so I decided to do some searches. Here are some interesting results on what Google knows about you.
Social Bookmarking

Google knows what social bookmarking sites you participate in, such as digg.

kevin rose digg

Photo Sharing

Google knows what photo sharing sites you use.

paul stamatiou photos

Favorite Blogs

Google knows what your favorite blogs are.

steve rubel technorati

MySpace

Google knows if you have a MySpace profile.

tim benzinger myspace

Blogging

Google knows where you blog at.

paul scrivs blog

Wikipedia

Google knows if you have a Wikipedia page.

matt mullenweg wikipedia

Forums

Google knows what forums you participate in.

chris boggs forums

Books

Google knows what book(s) you have written.

shel israel books

Podcast

Google knows if you have been on a podcast.

jason fried podcast

LinkedIn

Google knows if you are LinkedIn.

frederico oliveira linkedin

Neil Patel
Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider that helps companies make better business decisions. Neil also blogs about marketing and entrepreneurship at Quick Sprout.

Speak your mind!

  1. That’s quite interesting, although really it’s just that Google only knows you if you publish content actively on the web and use your real name to do so. So while Google might know a lot about you if you use your real name to do stuff on the internet, it would only take a small amount of caution to ensure that you’re not popping up on Google searches if you don’t want to be.

  2. Luckily for me there’s quite a few other Andy Spencer’s in this world, and it just so happens that most of them are quite a bit more popular than me (at least with google). Google will tell you quite a bit about ‘Andy Spencer’ but not much at all about me. If you’re really lucky (or unluckily as some may see it) you’ll have a name like ‘Kevin Rose’ or ‘George Bush’ and basically make google useless to anyone trying to find anything out about you.

  3. This has nothing to do with what google knows about ME. All those people pretty well make their living from being googlable.

  4. Google found those hits because those people put that information on the internet and made it readily available to anyone who wants to know about it.
    A Google for my name, for example, gets absolutely no hits relating to myself, only people with the same name whose details are on the internet. If you’re paranoid, don’t put any personal details on your blog or website.

  5. This is good but all above mentioned people like to get googled for their one or other activity like to promote their book or blog etc etc

  6. Let’s not forget Yahoo:

    Del.icio.us – So you actually bookmarked that CollegeHumor.com page?

    Flickr – Vacation photos, BBQ with Friends photos (Now with Geotagging!)

    Upcoming.org – So you like to go to Web 2.0 parties and Rob Zombie concerts?

    Y!360 – Age, Location, Education etc

    Dont forget Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Jobs and oh yes, Yahoo Search…

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