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Digital Profile Management - Egosurfing

Posted Fri, July 23, 2010 by Jennifer Pointer

There are some other names for what we've been talking about this week, managing your own "digital profile" (or online reputation). It's also called "egosurfing," or doing a "vanity search." Wikipedia has info:

Egosurfing (usually referred to as Googling yourself and sometimes called vanity searching, egosearching, egogoogling, autogoogling, self-googling) is the practice of searching for one's own given name, surname, full name, pseudonym, or screen name on a popular search engine, to see what results appear. It has become increasingly popular with the rise of popular search engines, as well as free blogging and web-hosting services. It is sometimes combined with third-party tools when several people egosurf together, or with Pimp My Search when people create their own search engine, or accessed by SMS through services which people SMS their name to a number and an "egosearch" is performed on that name and returned (egotexting).

Similarly, an egosurfer is one who surfs the Internet for his or her own name, to see what, if any, articles appear about himself or herself.

The term was coined by Sean Carton in 1995 and first appeared in print as an entry in Gareth Branwyn's March 1995 Jagon Watch column in Wired.

The Daily Flip has additional information, including how to use Technorati for monitoring your brand online"

Have a good weekend, everyone!

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Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is a trainer and tech writer in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. Her weakness is the mocha frappuccino.