Web sites answer: What's in a name?Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-GuardHow many of you are there out there? It's one of the navel-gazing games that emerging people-search Web sites allow you to play. Type your name into these search engines, and you'll either get a list of all the people who share your appellation ap·pel·la·tion n. 1. A name, title, or designation. 2. A protected name under which a wine may be sold, indicating that the grapes used are of a specific kind from a specific district. 3. The act of naming. or a ranking based on how often your name turns up on a Web search. Other people-search sites charge money for their services and connect clients to public records databases around the country. They serve those who are serious about tracking someone down. But Zoominfo.com and Preople.com base their searches on an individual's online presence. So the more you write - or are written about - in material that regularly appears on the Internet, the Internet, the, international computer network linking together thousands of individual networks at military and government agencies, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, industrial and financial corporations of all sizes, and commercial enterprises more visible you are. Type your name into the search engine at Zoominfo.com and you'll get a concise list of everyone with that name, and the Web site where each of them is mentioned. Take former Mayor Jim Torrey. A search on his name retrieves 17 distinct listings. The Torrey collective includes a New Jersey hedge fund hedge fund, in finance, a highly speculative, largely unregulated investment device. Originating in the 1950s, the funds "hedge" by offsetting "short" positions (borrowing a security and then selling it at a higher price before repaying the lender) against "long" manager, a seventh-grade teacher, a minister and a doctor. You and I may know Ernie Kent Ernie Kent (Born January 22, 1955 in Rockford, Illinois) is the current head men's basketball coach at the University of Oregon. He has been the Ducks' coach since he replaced Jerry Green after Green left for University of Tennessee after the 1996-97 season. as the University of Oregon The University of Oregon is a public university located in Eugene, Oregon. The university was founded in 1876, graduating its first class two years later. The University of Oregon is one of 60 members of the Association of American Universities. basketball coach. But out there online, there's at least one other, a chief technology officer for a high-tech firm. There are at least 100 Susan Palmers online and dozens of them apparently went into the teaching profession. But there are also Susan Palmer lawyers, doctors, scientists and at least one professional soccer player. Zoominfo isn't infallible. Its summary of my work history, for example, has just one - incorrect - entry, listing me as a contributor to Cannabis News. Jan Eliot Jan Eliot is an American cartoonist. She writes and illustrates the comic strip "Stone Soup." She created a previous strip known as "Patience and Sarah," which enjoyed a run of five years in 10 publications. Her next comic strip was called "Sister City. is listed 12 times, but each listing refers to Eugene's own cartoonist, as though the search engine got stuck in a "Stone Soup" stutter stut·ter n. A phonatory or articulatory disorder characterized by difficult enunciation of words with frequent halting and repetition of the initial consonant or syllable. v. To utter with spasmodic repetition or prolongation of sounds. . And Zoominfo clearly has blind spots. A search for Mike Bellotti has 10 entries, including a Norfolk County sheriff, a National Wrestling Council president and a professional actor in rural western New York
Western New York refers to the westernmost region of New York State. . But there is no listing for University of Oregon football coach Mike Bellotti, despite the fact that a Google search on those terms yields 1,400 separate entries. But over at Preople.com, a Web site that actually ranks people by the number of times they're listed online, Bellotti's no stranger, with a 5,100 ranking, outstripping Kent who's ranked a mere 845. With a score of 17,000, I outrank out·rank tr.v. out·ranked, out·rank·ing, out·ranks To rank higher than. outrank Verb to be of higher rank than (someone) Verb 1. the UO coaches, but only because of the Susan Palmer collective - it's all those scholarly articles by the Susan Palmer scientists, lawyers and educators. Preople doesn't distinguish among us. Still, we're small fry to the nation's personality powerhouses. Take Michael Jackson. When it comes to Web presence, he outranks us all. |
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