Go Google Yourself...

Ok I'm back. Yesterday was a tough day because I got so flustered by the immigrant marches that I couldn't write anything at all. I think I got it out of my system, so today its time to Google yourself. I don't know at what point Google went from being an internet search engine to a verb, but it has happened all over the country. You read it, you see it on tv, and you hear it in everyday conversations. Hey, does anyone know the GDP of Somalia? "I don't know dude, just Google it." Dammit this book report is kicking my ass. "Fuckin' Google a book report on line bro." People will use Google in every situation where an internet search is involved. Anyway, I decided that since people love to Google things so much, why shouldn't I Google myself?

I took a stroll through cyberspace over to the Google website, and typed in my name. The search took .53 seconds and produced 65,700 results. I believe the reason I had so many hits was my first name, which is 'Adam.' I was curious to explore what sort of pages popped up on my search. Incredibly, the first page the search brings up is me. The strange thing is that it is a petition I signed online to try and stop the cancelation of Arrested Development on Fox. Here is what I added to my signature: "This show is so funny, its ridiculous that nobody watches it. Once you know the characters, almost every line or scene has a joke or something funny in it. BRING IT BACK!!!" I vaguely remember writing this, but the sentiment still is there...that show was really funny and nobody watched it...what a shame.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the next two pages were me too! My internet popularity is through the roof. Both are box scores of college baseball games. Apparently on March 14, 2004, I was 2-4 with a double and 3 Ribs(RBI). The next game was March 19, 2004. In that game I was 4-4 with 2 doubles, a HR and 5 Ribs. Not too shabby. I remember those games, they were out in California. The March 19th game was my first college home run. At this point I'm reasonably sure the only time my name is showing up on the internet is for baseball. The next five hits prove that, with something about a guy in Vegas and his Tivo, some kid in the Atlantic Youth Hockey League with my name, and a photographer with a photo journal from Mount Washington.

The last two hits on the first page involved me and some more baseball games. The first is a game I had a RBI single in, but the next one blew my mind because it was from high school. It's from when our team clinched being co-champs of our league, and there is a maaaad blurry picture of me there taking a pitch. The second page consisted of box scores, someone in a kids triathalon, another kid looking at horned owls with binoculars, and finally more baseball stuff from when I played Legion. That seemed like eons ago, and I didn't even know those games were getting into the newspaper.

(I'm taking a pitch...that isn't how I swing)

On page 3 of my self-Google search, my first and second name stopped showing up consecutively, meaning that any article with 'Adam' and 'DiOrio' in it were hits. I did, however, find the article I was hoping to find. It is from a college game on April 15, 2004. I would say this was my best day as a college baseball player. I entered the first game of a double header in the 9th inning as a pinch hitter, and promptly struck out with men on base. My next time up in the 10th, I made up for my strike out with an RBI single, which gave us a 6-4 lead going into the bottom of the 10th. Then, with the game tied at 6 in the top of the 12th inning, I came up with the bases loaded and hit a grand slam. In the second game of the double header I hit another home run. It is a great feeling to hit a game winning home run, and it being a grand slam made it even sweeter.

Outside of baseball box scores from past games, my relevance on the internet is close to nil. However, I was still curious about a few things. For instance, what is the strangest site I can visit through Google after Googling myself? I found a chiropractor in Las Vegas named Adam Christ DiOrio (my middle name seems so insignificant now). There's a Derek DiOrio that was on the tv show You Can't Do That on Television. Outside of that, its mostly a hodgepodge of random names that include 'adam' and 'diorio' separately, but in the same article. Also, I just found out if you search for your name with quotations around it, the results drop considerably. "Adam DiOrio" only yields 196 results as opposed to the un-quotationed Adam DiOrio which is over 65,000.

Strangely, when I Yahoo! myself, the results are different. The Yahoo! search only yielded 31,800 hits, and took just .11 seconds. I always thought Yahoo! and Google used the same search engine, but maybe they don't. Just for fun, I typed in a few famous names to see how many hits each would receive through Google. Typing in David Ortiz gives you 13,700,000 hits to choose from. Jessica Simpson came in with 8,730,000 hits. Our fearless leader George W. dominated things with 198,000,000 pages of idiocy. Axl Rose only had 1,580,000 pages dedicated to him, while Michael Jordan comes up 67 million times. These are names I just picked at random because I thought they would yield big results. Axl Rose was one I searched for just to see if people were interested in him even though he has been out of the spotlight for so long...same with Jordan. Jordan is obviously still relevant, but if the internet was around in the late 80's, I bet Axl would have been closer to 20 million hits.

Then I searched for famous people who, judging by the hit totals, I thought I had a chance to be more famous than. I first searched for Tom Arnold who amazingly had 28,800,000 hits. Kato Kalen who had a meager 13,400 which means I got that joker beat. I was dominated by Fred Savage, who had 5 million, and Kirk Cameron who had 4.7 million. I beat out Soleil Moon Frye by 3,300. Alan Thicke beat me out by a good margin, Ross Perot and Michael Dukakis beat me handily, and I was even beaten by cartoon character Millhouse van Houten (Simpsons), who took in 83,000 hits. Over all my name beats Punky Brewster and that guy from the O.J. case, so even though its slim fame, I'll take it.

So what have we learned about Googling yourself? Firstly, unless you were in the newspaper or own a website or something, you probably won't find much about yourself on Google. Also, the more common your first name is, the more likely it is to find pages containing that name. Finally, I realized that while 'Adam' is a common first name, Kato and Soleil are not. That makes me a D-List celebrity if we are basing it on Google, and thats all I'm basing it on. Thank you for reading...now go Google yourself and see what you can find.