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Lewis S. Eisen
Once ever two or three months I go ego-surfing on the Internet. I want to know where my name and my firm have cropped up in the massive jumble of web sites, newsgroups, and ftp archive sites.
You should, too. You'll receive some useful feedback about the value of your web site --or postings to mailing lists and newsgroups--to other users of the Net. Knowing that you show up on Yahoo! Canada site lists may be satisfying, but it's nothing to be complacent about. Heck, Yahoo!'s not even a search engine; it's merely a directory.
But even if you turn up in a real search engine, such as AltaVista or Excite , that's a moderate accomplishment. It only indicates that people can find you, not that anyone actually wants to. What you want to know is whether people think enough of your site to direct others there, or think enough of you to recommend your name to someone else.
Start at AltaVista, and type your name into the search field. Enter it in quotation marks (to search for it as a phrase), and if you have a middle name or initial you use frequently you may want to try it once with the extra information and once without. That search will produce a list of sites that mention your name in some context.
You might be surprised who's used your name: a CLE organization advertising a program, a club you belong to, or your cousin's kids on their web site. If you're lucky, a satisfied client might be extolling your virtues; if not, an unhappy one might be spinning a sob story and warning off others.
Try the same search in other search engines, too. Aside from the ones mentioned above, you might try Google , which will rank sites in order of popularity. Then go to Deja.Com (formerly DejaNews) to see if your site has been mentioned in any newsgroup discussion that AltaVista's Usenet search didn't turn up.
Also check out Northern Light, , which will have categorized your site as Commercial, Personal, Canadian, or some other category. You might even want to check AltaVista Canada , to see if it produces results different from the U.S. version.
Do similar searches on your firm name. At the end of the exercise, you'll have a good idea about where your name appears throughout the Internet.
But that's only the first half of the job. You'll still want to search for people who have linked to your site, even if they haven't mentioned you by name. That's all too common, I'm afraid. Someone links to you without the courtesy of titling your site properly, or worse, misspells your name.
Go to AltaVista and search for your site by typing in the word 'link:' followed by the full URL of your web site; I type in the phrase, "link:http://www.magma.ca/~leisen"; the search engine will scour the HMTL code of the pages, and not just the visible text.
This search will turn up another set of hits: people who have included you on their 'favourite sites' list, people who want to link to a specific article or feature on your site but not the home page, and sundry other mentions.
As you do your searches, and turn up new sites or newsgroup postings mentioning you, you'll want to follow up on what you've found. Send a thank-you e-mail message where possible to someone who has listed you properly; they're more likely to mention you again or maintain the link for a longer time. You might even want to set up a return link.
If you've been listed with incorrect information, or misspelt somehow, don't send an indignant note. Send a thank-you offering corrections. Ask if they want to be notified when there are changes to the site.
You never know where you'll turn up. A recent SPAM e-mail message I received advised me of yet another new can't-live-without-it web site of legal links. The front page of that web site displayed prominent advertisements for eCarswell's new on-line services, complete with official logos and links.
A quick call to Carswell verified that no one there had ever authorized the use of their name or logos, much less actually paid for the advertising. Obviously, someone was trying to capitalize on their reputation. Carswell chose to leave the site alone; after all, it was good, free promotion. Come to think of it, maybe a thank you is in order? (I've not provided the URL because, firstly, I'm not going to reward a SPAMmer, and secondly, the site is not particularly good.)
The most valuable part of this exercise, in my opinion, is not discovering what links exist to you or your site. It's the constant reminder of how pervasive the Internet can be. As time goes on I see not only brand new recent references to my name and firm, but brand new older ones as well. As historical records are converted to on-line format, accumulated in databases and made available for search, the amount of information on the Internet grows at both ends of the timeline.