Today, I did something completely random.
I searched my full name on Google
I wasn't expecting much. There are plenty of people with similar names.
But at the top of the results, Gemini gave me a surprisingly detailed summary about me.
It included my LinkedIn About section, my GitHub profile, my GitHub projects, and even my GitHub username.
The weirdest part?
I had never posted those GitHub projects on LinkedIn.
So I immediately wondered:
How did Google connect all of this?
And more importantly, if Gemini and Google Search are both Google, how do they actually work together?
Google Search ≠ Gemini
Although both belong to Google, they have different jobs.
Think of it this way:
🔎 Google Search → finds information
🧠 Gemini → understands and explains information
When you search something normally, Google Search looks through its huge index of webpages and finds information relevant to your query.
Gemini is a generative AI model that can understand questions, reason about information, summarize it, and generate an answer.
But Google has increasingly connected these capabilities.
When Gemini needs current or specific information from the web, it can use Google Search to find it. Google calls this process grounding with Google Search.
So, in a simplified form:
You ask a question
↓
Google Search finds relevant information
↓
Gemini processes that information
↓
Gemini generates an answer
But How Did It Find My GitHub?
This is the part I found most fascinating.
My LinkedIn and GitHub don't need to be directly connected.Both can be publicly searchable.
For example:
LinkedIn
→ My name
→ My education
→ My skills
→ My About section
GitHub
→ My name/username
→ My repositories
→ My projects
Google can discover these pages separately.
AI can then look at clues such as names, usernames, projects, links, skills, and other information to determine whether different results are likely related.
So it isn't necessarily:
LinkedIn → GitHub → Gemini
It can be:
Public Internet → Google Search → Gemini → AI-generated answer
That's why it can feel like Gemini somehow "knows" you.
Does Gemini Have a Secret File About Me?
Not necessarily.
If the information it showed me came from public webpages, the simpler explanation is that those details were already available on the internet.
Google Search found them.
Gemini helped summarize and connect the information.
Google also uses systems such as its Knowledge Graph, which helps Search understand relationships between people, places, things, and information.
So what feels like:
“How does Google know all this about me?”
can sometimes simply be:
“I left different pieces of information publicly available, and Google's systems were able to find and connect them.”
The Interesting Part About AI Search
Traditional Google Search was mostly:
Ask → Get links → Read the links yourself.
AI-powered Search is moving toward:
Ask → Search → Understand → Summarize → Explore.
Google's newer AI Search features can also break complicated questions into multiple searches, gather information from different sources, and bring the results together.
In other words, Search is slowly moving from:
“Here are some websites.”
to:
“Here's what I found and what it means.”
What I Learned From Googling Myself
This little experiment made me realize something:
Our online presence is more connected than we think.
LinkedIn is one piece.
GitHub is another.
A portfolio, project, article, or public profile can be another.
We may think of these as separate accounts. But from the perspective of Search and AI, they can become pieces of one larger digital footprint.
And honestly?
Seeing an AI put those pieces together about me was a little creepy. 😂
But mostly, it was fascinating.
I searched my name.
Google found the pieces.
Gemini helped connect and explain them.
And suddenly, I got to see my own digital footprint from the outside.
