Of course, having a virtual double isn’t always a bad thing. Maureen Johnson, a New York City writer, has many a-gänger: a realtor in Massachusetts, a crab lady in Cape Cod, a character in a sci-fi book and the character in the Broadway musical Rent, who breaks up with her boyfriend for another woman. Johnson enjoys a good laugh when her readers ask: Do you know there is a Maureen Johnson in the musical Rent? Was she based on you? “It seems to have blurred the line between fiction and reality,” Johnson says. “Google makes no distinction between who’s real and who’s not, so when Rent Maureen and I come up in a mixed bag of search results, we’re equally viable.”

That’s not always a bad thing — Googlegängers can bring real people together, too. Slutsky has befriended 42 other Slutskys on Facebook! And Fischer says his daily Google battle with “Bobby” has gotten him into a lot of conversations he might not have otherwise had.

As for Fairbanks, her name was ultimately removed from the explicit sites, thanks to pressure from her mother and a cooperative user support team at Google. But she was also a little sad to see her Googlegänger go.