ungoogleable

n.

A person for whom no information appears in an Internet search engine, particularly Google. —adj. Also: unGoogleable, ungooglable, unGoogle-able.

Example Citations:

Amnemia: The loss of all memory tricks related to name recall, brought about after years of relying on Photobucket, Facebook and Google to look up all the names on the business cards one has collected. Amnemia manifests itself when one finally meets an "ungoogleable" and can be cured either by, well, learning to remember people, or more easily by snapping camphone shots of everyone one meets.

—Nick Douglas, " New words for a new year: http://valleywag.com/tech/diggbait/new-words-for-a-new-year-224713.php," Valleywag, December 28, 2006

"Ungooglable" is one of those words that people understand completely the first time they hear it. And it encapsulates, all in a single word, the ubiquity of Internet search engines, particularly Google; the need some people feel to escape them; and the way a corporate name can morph itself from a proper noun to an active verb.

—Ruth Walker, " So ungooglably yours: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1019/p18s02-hfes.html," Christian Science Monitor, October 19, 2005

Earliest Citation:

But despite Google's inarguable power to dredge up information, some people have succeeded — either by luck, conscious effort or both — in avoiding the search engine's all-seeing eye.

These unGoogleables don't post online, blog, publish or build web pages using their own names. They're careful about revealing information to businesses, belong to few organizations that can leak personal data, and never submit online résum&eacutes — all common ways that Google captures your data.

—Ann Harrison, " 'unGoogleables' Hide From Search: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2005/10/68998?currentPage=all," Wired News, October 3, 2005

Notes:

The adjectival form is more common than the noun, and is also a bit older:

anyone know anything about or want to claim this directory? It only seems to work for my broadcom 1000BT nics, which would be a shame as it's darn useful.

—Blue Lang, " undocumented, ungoogleable /proc/net/nicinfo interface: http://groups.google.com/group/mlist.linux.kernel/browse_thread/thread/426cd2cb9446292f/3130947e51cc1e7e?lnk=st&q=(ungoogleable+OR+ungooglable)&rnum=25\#3130947e51cc1e7e," mlist.linux.kernel, November 21, 2001

Related Words:

fridge Googling

google

Google bombing

googleability

Googleganger

Googlejuice

Googleverse

Categories:

Data

Internet

Privacy and Security