Googling someone has become a common act for me over the last year or so. I regularly Google people when I’m curious to find out more about them. Especially at work when we’re dealing with a software vendor and they send in a “specialist” to assist us. I will always Google them to see what their background is, what qualifications they have, etc. It’s almost like a second resume and can help gain or lose credibility.
I did some Google optimization on this website so that when people type in “Jim Schwartz” in Google I wanted to be one of the top 10 results. For a long while I was approximately 60th in the list, but as of last week I have been in the top 5 results. I chose to do this in order for old out-of-touch friends to be able to contact me. (Or a really cute girl I met at the airport in Chicago to be able to contact me since I was a jackass and didn’t give her my number 
haha)
Anyway, it didn’t take long for a consultant that I had worked with (whom had no idea that I had a website) to “Google Me”, and before I knew it a female consultant whom I spoke to today had heard about my website through an unnamed co-worker last week. So I would say my Google tactics were a success