If you have ever searched for your name on Google, you may have noticed that there are many places where people can find information about you on the Internet. These sources include Google itself, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and others.
How do you know who is looking for you on the Internet? Fortunately, most of these resources have monitoring services that you can use to get alerts when someone looks for your name.
Below are some very simple things you can do to set up alerts or otherwise track when people search for your name online.
LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Alerts, Google Analytics (on the site with your name / domain), Facebook Stories, Facebook Friends List algorithm
1. LinkedIn Profile Reviews
People can search for your name on LinkedIn, or they can search for your profile using Google and thus access your public profile information.
LinkedIn gives members an easy way to find out who has viewed your profile.
To see this information, please sign in to your LinkedIn account. Below your profile name on the left side of the screen, you will see a link Who viewed your profile.
To the right of the link, you can see how many people have recently viewed your profile. Click on the link to see details.
Scroll down to the All viewers section of your profile. Here you will see some information about who recently viewed your LinkedIn account.
This information includes:
- Name
- Which company they work for.
- How they found your profile.
- Which of your LinkedIn connections are also associated with this person
- How long ago they viewed your profile
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see the entire list of people who have viewed your profile without purchasing a premium LinkedIn membership.
If you really need to know who is viewing your LinkedIn profile, this premium membership might be worth it.
2. Create google alerts for your name
The most common tool that people will use to find information about you on the Internet is Google. While you won’t be able to track who searches for your name on Google, you can track when new information is posted online with your name.
To create an alert when something is posted with your name mentioned, visit Google Alerts
Make sure you are already signed in to your Google Account. In the Create Alert About field, enter your name and select Create Alert.
Every time you add something to your Google Alert List, or when Google has a new search entry for a website containing your name, you will receive an email with this Google alert. This email will contain links to websites that mention your name.
You will notice that at the bottom of the email, you can click the link to receive RSS feed alerts. This will allow you to add the feed to any feed reader that you can use.
3. Facebook story viewers
One of the most common requests from Facebook users is to find out who viewed their Facebook profile. Unfortunately, this cannot be done. However, there are sections on Facebook where you can see the people who have visited.
If you publish a regular Facebook post, the only way to know who has viewed it is by how many people have “liked†the post itself. Now it is possible to see all your friends who looked at him.
However, this is not the case when you add your stories to Facebook. If you select the Facebook post field, you will notice that you can switch the post from the news feed to your story.
You can post up to 20 seconds of video (or images) to your Facebook Story. The message will remain active for 24 hours, after which it will disappear.
Once you post your story, you will notice that an eye icon appears with a number next to it in the lower left corner of the post. The number represents the number of your friends who viewed the post. If you click on the eyeball icon, you will see your friends who viewed the message.
If you’re browsing your Facebook news feed, you can see a link to your story on the right. To the left of it, you will see your profile picture with a + sign. If you click this button, you can view all of your recent history posts, as well as which of your friends have viewed those posts.
Unfortunately Facebook does not offer this feature for regular posts, but at least when you post posts to your story list, you can see all of your friends who have viewed the post.
4. Facebook friends algorithm
While it’s impossible to see a list of friends who have viewed your specific Facebook posts, there is an indirect way to find out which friends are interacting the most with your Facebook profile.
No one really knows the specific details of Facebook’s algorithm that determines the order in which friends appear in your friends list.
But enough research has been done to know that all of the following factors are considered.
- Facebook Engagement: How often do you interact with these Facebook friends.
- Profile Views: How often these friends have viewed your profile or you have viewed them.
- Photo Tagging: Friends who tagged you in photos.
- Wall Posts: Friends who recently posted messages on your wall.
- Likes: How often your friends like your messages or how much you like their messages.
- Commenting: The frequency with which you or friends comment on each other’s posts or images.
- Photos: How often have you viewed each other’s photos.
- Online: If friends are currently online, they are more likely to appear at the top of your friend list.
Since the most common activity on Facebook is to view friends’ profiles and posts without interacting with them, chances are high that the friends at the top of your friends list are the friends who viewed your profile and your posts the most.
5. Twitter viewers
Twitter provides a little more information about your Twitter followers than Facebook, but still doesn’t share the names of the people looking for you.
However, you can learn a lot about the people who interact with your tweets.
To see information about your audience, you need to use Twitter Analytics. You can access it by clicking the down arrow next to your profile name and choosing Google Analytics.
This page will show you who your main follower is and the overall performance of all your tweets.
You can click the View Followers panel to view general information about your Twitter audience.
You can see demographics such as gender, household income, and interests of your followers. It might not tell you the names of the people looking for you on Twitter, but at least it does tell you their interests so you can tailor the topics you tweet about for your followers.
6. Create a personal profile site using Google Analytics
With blogging platforms like WordPress or Google Sites, it’s very easy to create your own website with a profile filled with information about your background and experiences. A profile website is a great way to easily share your past and career experiences with potential employers.
Over time, it will also become one of the first search results for people to search for your name if you purchased a website domain for your name.
This will likely become the website that most people will go to when they search for you on the Internet.
If you embed Google Analytics on this site, you can collect a lot of information about people who are looking for information about you on the Internet.
Google Analytics may not provide the names of people who visit your site, but you can find out about the rest. For example, Google Analytics will provide:
- Age
- Gender
- Country
- Interests
- Frequency of visits
- Searches Used
This information can give you some insight into the types of people who are looking for you on the Internet. If you are a writer or work in any other business where you provide information to people, this information can help you tailor your job to the demographic characteristics of the people looking for your job.
Who is looking for you?
As you can see, LinkedIn and other social media sites are the best way to find out exactly who’s looking for you on the Internet. But Google Alerts and your website can provide even more information as well. Which approach you take depends on what information you want to know about these people.
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