(CNN) -- Web search engines make our lives easier: They connect us with what we're searching for in a matter of seconds, and sometimes they bring us to places we didn't even know we were looking for.

But they can also teach us a lot about ourselves, as more than half of adult internet users already know.

About 57 percent of adult internet users in the United States said they have entered their name into a search engine to assess their digital reputation, according to a new Pew Research Center study "Reputation Management and Social Media."

That's a significant increase since 2006, when only 47 percent of adult internet users said they had looked their name up on a search engine. The findings show "reputation management has now become a defining feature of online life," the study says.

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