By The Way...

Tuesday, April 10, 2007
10:41:00 AM EDT
Hearing New Kid in Town -- The Eagles
Only about five or so years after the rest of us!

For better or worse, "googling" your date has become standard practice. "I often tell my friends that are still in the dating sphere to use the power of Google to their advantage," says Katie Laird, a 24-year-old Web marketing professional and self-proclaimed "social software geek" from Houston.

The results can be enlightening, surprising -- and sometimes, a little disturbing. So Laird's advice also comes with a warning: "Don't google what you can't handle."

Hers is the voice of experience. In her dating life, she regularly did online research on her dates and turned up, among other things, "bizarre" fetishes and a guy who was fascinated with vampires. "Not my scene at all," Laird says, "and nothing I would've ever guessed over an initial meeting and beer."

I should note that running an search engine check on people (as the "googling" should be called so as not to enrage Google's intellectual property lawyers) really isn't just the purview of people dating each other - why, I hardly date anyone anymore (my wife would frown on it) but when people e-mail me right out of the blue or otherwise initiate contact with me, I have a tendency to search on their name just to see what pops up. I can't imagine that other people don't do the same with me. Fortunately the first few pages of most search engines results are about me and my books, which is a generally positive collection of links. There's hardly anything about my badger-strangling proclivities or my days as a shirtless karaoke backup singer. Hmmm, forget I mentioned those.

In any event, people doing these sorts of searches is now just a part of life -- and not just dating life.

Have you ever done a search engine check on someone? Did you date them afterward?


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This entry has 6 comments: (Add your own)

• #6 Comment from lusciouskristin 
  12/10/07 1:28 AM | Permalink

  Interesting article.
  
  I also have interesting articles about men, women, dating, online dating, etc. Check out my blog at http://www.adultdatingpost.com
  
  Feel free to comment in my entries. =)
  
• #5 Comment from plittle 
  4/10/07 10:22 PM | Permalink

    Apparently, I am a popular evangelical writer. Oh, yeah, I died in 1975. Plus, I'm a famous porn star. Man, I love it when people google my name.
  -Paul
  http://journals.aol.ca/plittle/AuroraWalkingVacation/
  
• #4 Comment from mavarin 
  4/10/07 5:22 PM | Permalink

  I just found out that my husband is a Phoenix prediatrician, and that the Gettysburg farm he bought in 1823 was the subject of an archeological dig in the 1990s.  Or not. - Karen
• #3 Comment from marciepooh1976 
  4/10/07 12:14 PM | Permalink

  I googled myself once and found out that there is an MD with my exact name. Maybe potential dates will think I have more earning power:)
  
  People need to realize that employers may google an interviewee and use what they find in the hiring decision. Obviously the less common the name, the more useful this is. A friend told me about a grad student she knows who was horrified that other students read her MySpace page to find out about her before the semester started ("It's just for my friends and family!"). The same friend is careful about what she writes on her blog to avoid future embarassment for her children.
  
  If it is on the web it will be found, and it will never die.
• #2 Comment from trunkboy21 
  4/10/07 11:58 AM | Permalink

  Your name is pretty unique (Scalzi not being a Jones, or a Smith).  Common names can really be disastrous though.
  
  Thankfully, the most common hit for my name is a woman chiropractor.  Pretty harmless stuff, but considering I'm neither a woman, nor a chiropractor, the possible implications are a bit scary!
  
  Think of all the poor Chuck Mansons in the world...
  
  

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