Ego surfer

happygeek 0 263 Views

I admit it; there are times when I have gone to Google (and Yahoo, MSN, Ask and even occasionally a decent Meta-Search such as Dogpile) for no other reason than to see what people are saying about me online. I like to think that I have an excuse, what with being a professional journalist and all, in that I am looking for illegally copied versions of my work, potentially libelous comments and even the odd bit of praise here and there. Of course, the truth is I am doing what huge swathes of us do even if we do not, or will not admit it: ego surfing.

The trouble is, exactly what metric do you apply to such an activity in order to truly gauge the size of your online presence? The number of hits from an enclosed in double quotes Google search? The number of positive postings minus the number of negative ones? Maybe how many comments your blog posts have attracted, or how many page views your vanity home page receives? The point being that there is not a metric that works, possibly until now that is. I have recently discovered that rather excellent, if admittedly pointless, that is designed to determine your online popularity, and nothing else.

Just enter your name together with web domain or blog address, choose the search engines you want to interrogate (from a basic google.com search through to all encompassing deep searches that include Yahoo, MSN, del.icio.us and Technorati) and wait a minute. The validity of the resulting speedo dial graphically displayed ego points is questionable, mainly because nobody is saying how they are actually arrived at. At least there is something to compare your score to, as the site lists the biggest egos for you to covet. This is a tad unfair when entities such as blogspot (26986) and engadget (13215) are included at the top table. Annoyingly, one LordDCloud seems to have a score of 28890, which makes my seem a little weak. Mind you, I take some cold comfort in knowing that Bill Gates was not that far ahead of me on 5058.

Go on then, I can take the pain: what is your ego rating?

Dani AI

Generated

Checking your own name online is normal — whether you’re hunting copied work or just satisfying curiosity. Fun "ego" widgets give a single, neat number, but that number is noisy and opaque: different engines, name ambiguity, duplicate pages, social feeds and personalization all change what gets counted. As pointed out, a single metric can be misleading; and ’s posts show that results shift day to day and that different publication types (forums vs. bylined articles) dominate what surfaces.

To get a clearer picture, run a few focused searches rather than trusting one score. Use exact phrases, limit or exclude domains, and compare name variants (middle initial, full middle name, handle). Examples you can paste into a search box:

"First Last"
"First M. Last" site:example.com
"First Last" -site:facebook.com -site:twitter.com
intitle:"First Last"
"First Last" OR "First Middle Last"

If the goal is to manage or improve what people find, take these practical steps: pick one consistent byline and use it everywhere; create a canonical personal page that aggregates your work; add author/identity markup on your site; verify your site in webmaster tools and submit a sitemap; check robots.txt and meta robots to make sure public pages are crawlable; consolidate duplicates with canonical tags; set up alerts for new mentions; and pursue formal takedown routes only for copyrighted or libelous content. ’s experience is a reminder that no presence = little to find, while shows forums can dominate a profile — so tailor where you publish to match the image you want. Finally: treat ego scores as entertainment and use the manual checks above for anything you care about.

Member Avatar for alc6379
alc6379 120 Cookie... That's it

I got a 0 on that site :(

I don't really have a consistent blog, so that probably explains it. If you search my name in quotes, though, you get over 33,000 hits, all mine!

Member Avatar for happygeek
happygeek 2,411 Most Valuable Poster

It seems to search for mentions of your name in other blogs as well though, and mentions of your website.

My ego rating is based upon a search of Davey Winder with www.happygeek.com for example.

Doing a search for Davey Winder at Google returns 'about' 87,800 hits apparently. I have not counted them all to see if it is really 87,826 or whatever though. My ego is not that big... :D

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Dani 5,664 The Queen of DaniWeb

Doing a searh for 'cscgal' with 'www.daniweb.com' gave me 6684 ego points.

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happygeek 2,411 Most Valuable Poster

You are now officially more popular than Bill Gates :D

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tgreer 189 Made Her Cry

5612... mainly from forum postings. Oddly, very few of my poetry/publishing related search results for "Thomas D. Greer" were found or contributed to the ranking, even though a strict Google search turns up more of those than tech-related info.

A fun little tool, but I wonder how useful this really is as a metric. I suppose for people making their living via their blog/site it's a nice measure.

Member Avatar for Dani
Dani 5,664 The Queen of DaniWeb

It must have been a bad day. 8820 points the second time around. Same criteria.

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