This week’s Vertical: the “People Search” Engines We have all heard about the trick of “googling” another person before going out on a blind date. But is this really a reliable thing to do, or is it just another case of Internet hype? This feature story about the Vertical Search Engines known as “People Search,” will seek to discover just how much you can find out about another person using the Top 10 People Search alternative search engines. So, What do you really know about me? Let’s suppose you love this blog, and you want to google me. The only information you have is what I have decided to make public in the “About” section of this blog which says, “AltSearchEngines is edited by Charles Knight, a respected industry analyst and former SEO from Charlottesville, Virginia.” Now, let’s play Junior Detective! PeekYou claims to have over 50 million profiles online. All I had to enter was “Charles Knight” and I got 118 results, with a geographic prompt. Once I added Virginia, it was narrowed down to 3 (2 in Covesville, and I in Burke). A quick trip to MapQuest would reveal that Covesville is just South of Charlottesville (and that it’s very, very small.) Clicking further, it shows that I am a male, 45. Click on that link, and you get categories of information about my business ventures, social networking sites, news and other profiles that I have created on other sites, and photo(s) of me. It also tracks at the top who has been “peeking” at me! So when I went to the next stop, I can use Covesville VA. pipl returns just one match, and that link goes directly to InfoSpace. InfoSpace might give you my middle initial, age, college graduation, address, phone number, and public records, but it has so many Charles Knights, that you would have no idea which one is me, Zabasearch could not find me. Very disappointing! The Internet Address book claims tohave records on me from MySpace, friendster, LinkedIn, Flickr, Xanga, and Hyves. I clicked on some of these; 94 wrong MySpace results; 1 wrong friendster; 16 LinkedIn hits that go to a “no profile page.” Xanga (timberwolf132, how strange) and Hyves were both wrong (I have never lived in the Netherlands.) But you would learn that I am married, and that my wife’s name is Laura. Next up is Serph. Serph gathers results from blog search engines, social media websites, social news websites and social bookmarking websites, which “track buzz in real time.” Serph returned 42 results, the first one being a Russian blog which mentioned me recently. About half of the 42 results were correctly about the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines list, and the other half about other Charles’. Nothing really new, however. Technorati claims to know “Everything in the known universe about Charles Knight.” The first few blog posts were okay, but then it was followed by 7,336 blog posts about any Charles or Knight. yoname, as in, “Hey, what’s yo name?” had results from: YouTube, MySpace, Xanga, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, LastFM (?), Friendster, and Facebook. This time the LinkedIn link worked, but you only get my public profile, which tells you nothing new. But the newcomer, Spock, would reveal my birthday, November 4, 1961. So if I tried to pass myself off as single and 32, I would be busted. Go ahead, Google yourself - we all have! Last, but certainly not least, I googled myself. A few of the search results were from search related articles, but most of the results were for other, really famous Charles Knights; primarily the artist Charles R. Knight. Conclusion So, having started and ended back here at AltSearchEngines, would you really learn that much about me? Not really. You could pick up that I lived in Covesville, near Charlottesville, with my wife Laura, and that I’m 45, a former SEO and University of Virginia graduate, but that’s about all. Nothing very exciting; or is it that I’m not very exciting? Of all the “alternatives,” I’d have to say thet PeekYou provides a very good summary of my Internet profile. I challenge you readers to find out something more about me beyond what I have listed here. Whether it’s true or false, I’ll let you know in the comments section of this post!Oh, one last thing: can you select the real me?a. b. c.d.

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