Got an email from Alex at The MI Group. Corporation of Future Employment had sent them some details, but had missed something out (home address, and email address), so they stuck my name in Google, and sent me an email.
Which made me think about all the times I've met people at reunions / weddings / funerals / random events, and they say stuff like "I always wondered what happened to you". And I wonder why they didn't type my name into Google.
In fact, I know how many people have typed my name into Google, because I run a Google Adwords advert. Google adwords are the ads that appear on the right when you type different words into Google. You specify the words, the price you want to pay, and a few other things, and should someone type those words in, your advert will appear. (There are a couple of other extra clever things - Google holds a little auction each time, and whoever is willing to pay the most for their advert gets their advert to appear. But this can be overridden by the popularity of the advert - so if your advert is more popular, it appears more often.) Anyway, I set up a Google advert so that if you type my name into Google, an advert appears, saying "that's my name!" or something similarly inane. (Google don't charge you if the person doesn't click on it.) And because Google reports the number of people that are shown the ad, and the number that click on it, I know how often my name is typed into Google.
Anyway, you are expecting me to tell you how many people have searched for my name. Trouble is that one of the criteria Google uses to display an ad is how interesting it is, and they judge how interesting it is, by how many people click on it. It seems that my ads were so boring that no one clicked on them. Google said (effectively) "Your ads are crap, and we hate them. But if you pay us more, we'll show them anyway." So I've had to up my payment to 10c, each time someone clicks on them.
I did just type my name into Google, and an ad for Amazon appeared.
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