Brush up your online ego

There is a new website around for all you bloggers who want to know how you're doing online:

egoSurf helps massage the web publishers ego, and thereby maintain the cool equilibrium of the net itself.

We, the publishers of this here internet thing, need the occasional massage, the odd stroke. We aren't paid. We aren't recognised. Our sites hit count used to be enough, but no longer.

That's how the service describes itself in its FAQ. I couldn't have said it any better.

Egosurf.org checks how many of the top Google search results for your name actually refer to you by checking for links to your website. Searching Google for Silicon Valley Sleuth will get you a series of results. The top results is this blog, but the number five result points to some real estate website. The more links you score, the more points you get. Higher links too get more points, and direct links get more points than indirect referrals.

If you don't do well, you can take comfort in the fact that egoSurf is far from perfect and will skip some results. In some cases the service counted Google results where it disqualified the same Yahoo result. Also, you can enter more than one domain to look for, but that will get you penalty points.

In the end it all depends on having the right first name or name for your blog. If your site is called John Johnes' Blog, you have to compete with far more people that if you're some dude called Mathias Woloski writing for Southworks. Using a more rare search query allowed me to crank up the Ego points score for this blog to 10,735, accidentally landing in the top 50. Me landing in the top 50, doesn't that say enough to prove this service's flaws?

Tags: egosurf