Egosurfing and where it led me to
Egosurfing is searching for
your own name in search engines like Google. As Google by far is the most
popular search engine Googling yourself, egogoogling, autogoogling,
self-googling are all synonymous with egosurfing. Vanitysearching is also used
at times.
Like most people on the net,
I also occasionally do egosurfing. If I type in my full name I get about 2700
results. Only my surname yields 6300 results. Accepting that others would have
mis-spelt my name as Vyasa Murthy, then I get 16000. However I am Vyasamoorthy
in my own right, na? But Google keeps suggesting “Are you searching for Vyasa Murthy
Katti”. That gentleman, my namesake, is a famous musician in Karnataka. There are
others with my name in very senior position in business / industry. Reading
just a little bit I can easily pose and pass of as a big shot. There is one in
Vishakapatnam with my name who performs free of cost death-related rituals for
abandoned corpses.
It is worthwhile remembering
that egosurfing search results are almost always tailor made for you based on
secret profile about yourself compiled by Google. You can surprise or shock
yourself to any length when you come to know how much google knows about you.
If you keep location turned on in your mobile google even knows where you went
to pee.
The earliest reference to me
on the web proves that I was alive in 1966 as my name is listed as a staff
member in the Annual Report of Highways Research Station, Guindy Madras; that
came up when I was egosurfing for books mentioning me. Although I was searching the net from 1993
itself I cannot say I did egosurfing then – because the term Egosurfing came up
in 1995 only!!
I don’t know why others do
egosurfing. But I do often to locate articles I wrote but could not locate a
copy in my hard disk. I am surprised where all I am mentioned by others – in discussions,
forums, directories, books, acknowledgements, comments etc. As long as I don’t
land up on my own obituary, it is fine.
No comments:
Post a Comment