Reverse Googling

One of the really great things about the internet is its ability to locate people. I'm good at losing track of friends and then wanting to at least say hi to them again. It's some sort of separation anxiety I have with my past. I recently found a friend I had not seen or heard from in 30 years and contacted him. All thanks to Google.

"Googling" names, especially your own, is great fun. Ogged over at Unfogged has come up with a great idea for what he calls "reverse-googling" to locate hard to find people.

So, there was a woman in college, beautiful and elegant, who I really should
have asked out (who's elegant in college? exactly). But I was busy with my terrible
first, and never did. I've googled her since then, of course, but her name
is not only pretty common, but she shares it with another woman who graduated
from the same college in the same year. Google hell. But what I've realized is
that bloggers who are looking for long lost people can use reverse-googling:
mention the person on the blog, because everyone googles himself sooner or
later. You could just say "Hey, Betty Sue Gingersnaps, email me!" and sooner or
later, Betty Sue would see it. I'm not going to do it in this case, because I'm
pseudonymous, for one, and I don't want to embarrass this woman, but I think
it's a neat idea.

OK, so you need a blog to do this but that's easy enough. You can set up a blog in just a few minutes. If you're into to looking up people maybe setting up a blog with nothing but a lot of posts requesting individuals contact you would be the way to go. Include your email and maybe some indication who you are and just let it sit. Or, Google being Google, would you have to get some traffic on the blog lest it be relegated to page 45 of Google matches? I suppose it depends on how common the searched for name is.