Contributed by Paul Seaburn, Catalogs.com Top 10 Guru

Do you feel like you’re being followed?

If you’re on a social media site, it’s your own fault. If you’re on the Internet, you should know better. While it’s not legally possible to find out exactly who is Googling you or searching for your name on Facebook, there are many free ways to get a good approximation and some fee-paid ways to get more info.

Check out these ten ways to see who is looking for you.

10. Google yourself

The easiest and simplest way to get a feel for who is looking for you is to Google yourself – that is, enter your name in the search line on www.google.com. This will show you where your name is mentioned on web sites, in articles or blog posts and elsewhere. With some digging, you can sometimes find the real person (other than yourself), company or service who used your name.

9. Other search engines

Other search engines besides Google can search for your name. An easy way to try all of them at once, along with social media site searches and some government searches is snitch.name. Enter your name, check off any or all of the services you want to use and snitch.name will put your name in their search fields and display a screen for each showing where you’re mentioned. From that point, you can visit the site and possibly determine who has listed you.

8. Google alerts

Another option using Google is Google Alerts. Enter your name, your email address, your web site URL or your company name in the search box. Google Alerts will track when they are mentioned by anyone else and send you an email alert as it happens, daily or weekly. It can also track incoming links to your blog.

7. SocialMention

A nice free site for monitoring when your name or company are mentioned on social media sites is SocialMention. This search and analysis platform monitors over 100 social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) and can give you a snapshot of your mentions, a streaming list or a daily alert. You can see the names or pseudonyms of the owner of places where you are mentioned.

6. Who retweeted you

Twitter.com allows users to retweet or share your twitter posts with their followers. A nice way to find out information on who is retweeting you is by using whoretweetedme.com. Enter an URL that you’ve tweeted recently, like a blog post, and you’ll find out the 20 most influential retweeters, along with some statistics on your retweeters.

5. LinkedIn profile view report

Some social media sites will give you information about who views your profile. LinkedIn.com will give you the person’s name and headline (provided they are a LinkedIn user too) as well as other info not restricted by their own privacy settings. Profile Stats gives their full names, titles and companies.

4. WikiWorldBook

Sometimes knowing the location of who is looking for you can help. Once you create a profile page with them, WikiWorldBook.com will monitor who googles your name and give you an IP address, time and date of the event and a Google Map showing approximately where the person searching for you is located.

3. WhoIs.net

There are a number of sites that will give you information on the owner of a web site that may have come up in searches to see who is looking for you. A good one is whois.net. Enter the domain name and the owner’s name, address and other information is returned.

2. Stalker info

Stalkinfo.com provides information on where you were Googled from that’s similar to other services, but also has an interesting blog that covers many topics on cyberstalking and how to prevent it.

1. Ziggs

Ziggs.com is a social media site geared towards business professionals that has an extensive selection of alerts to let members know when their name has been searched on Google and their Ziggs profile clicked on.