W1: Initial Vanity Search

Vanity Search

This week our class was asked to do a vanity search via the internet. This search aimed to understand what we discover online from our name searches. We may need to assist students with comprehending the importance of being aware of their digital footprints. This is a bit nerve-wracking to ponder because, before this assignment, I had never completed such a search.

To begin, I logged into the computer and then to the internet, Google specifically. In the search field, I typed my name in quotes, “Ami Stovall,” as directed initially by our professor. The search results came back with a majority of sites that I was directly affiliated with through personal or work-related sites such as linked-in, Facebook, old academic work sites, my eportfolio account from years ago, several of our work campus sites that I have worked on committees where we presented something, and the reference of the information from the committee work was left online, sites where my colleagues and friends had posted their updated resumes, where I was listed as a reference, dignity.com where I had posted for people I knew through the years who had passed away. I created a post through the funeral home's website. Even car dealership sites and doctors’ office sites where I had submitted reviews through the years were listed in my search. I was not surprised by the list as a tech-savvy person, but I was shocked to find the sites where I had made reviews in that search list from my name. I rarely do reviews, but my thoughts are valid, and I used them as constructive criticism or praising the service or company for how they engaged me as a customer.

Next, I tried my search without quotes around my name. Because my name is “Ami,” there were many results with any word that had “Ami” in the spelling of the word. Also, I did notice the search mentioned above results with my name and directly related to me personally in this manner. Furthermore, I found additional search results within this search that were directly related to me personally, like YouTube, ratemyprofessor.com, Pinterest, Yahoo’s Flickr, and the ShowMe app, which were not located in the original search. Additionally, of interest was that when I reviewed the images tab, the only categories were animals and obituaries; where some of the images were those that I had uploaded to my Yahoo Flickr account or my Pinterest account of my animals and the others were not mine, but of users’ pages that either included my first name or my last name, but none of them were directly related to my family or me.

I searched with my name as “amistovall,” with no space between my first and last name. Again, my search pulled up my linked-in, Pinterest, YouTube, Yahoo, Flickr, ShowMe, Facebook, legacy.com, and my high school alum pages, to name some common social sites for people. These were common sites that I also use (most of them anyway), and the information published in my name at this time, as I reviewed, was all relevant and posted by me intentionally, so I was not surprised. It is important to note that I was born and grew up when phones were not mobile but connected to the wall. All my primary education was completed before the age of computers, but I did learn to type in school using manual typewriters. So, by the time and era of mobile phones, the internet, and social media accounts, I was an adult and cautious when sharing personal information with anyone.

Then, I searched using a different internet browser, Microsoft Bing. As with my original search, I used the same search criteria as the searches mentioned earlier that I completed using Google. These search results included all the same results I received and discussed above, but they also had some results that needed to be provided by Google search results. So, the results provided some sites with my name that were me and was affiliated with me, including my Google blogger site, my Twitter account, Foliotek, Zillow sites, and a few others, but nothing that would adversely surprise me since I was an adult already before social media, the internet, and other such public avenues of learning about a person and other than specific work, school, and some limited and reserve personal information, I try to be very mindful of what I post online and where I do post them.

Reflection

Only today, I had never done a vanity search online or thought about doing a vanity search online. This was an eye-opening experience, even though I probably still needed to explore the depths of my overall digital footprint fully. The reason that I did not go very deep into my vanity search is that I have limited knowledge of searching techniques online. However, I am successful with my daily searches and navigation online.