I like this coined term from the Free Online Dictionary of Computing:

egosurfing

<jargon> Scanning the World-Wide Web, databases, print media or research papers looking for the mention of your name.

(1997-04-17)

I'd like to coin one of my own:

Googlemass

The number of hits in google.com for a given query string.

There's an important distinction for personal names (important for egosurfing) between individual Googlemass and shared Googlemass. If you have two fairly unique names like mine (Sean Boisen), my individual Googlemass is just the count that results from querying the string "Sean Boisen" (today it's 252). That's because I've verified that each of these actually refers to me, not too surprising since i've only met one other person in my life who shares my last name and isn't a relative (someone my daughter and i met at her college orientation 2 years ago). However, my father-in-law, Elmer Jones (who happens to be visiting us this weekend) doesn't have it so easy. Some Googlemass counts for his name:

And as far as i can tell, none of the 12 are actually him (i haven't checked all 1020, though i'll bet some of those represent true individual Googlemass). Of course, adding a middle name or initial only helps if that's how you're actually referred to. I found one instance of my name with middle initial C. (in a former professor's curriculum vitae: if i'd written it, it wouldn't have had the initial).

When i first started egosurfing, i was a little discouraged to find my brother Myles has much greater Googlemass than i do (1730 hits today), despite my being involved with computers with over 20 years! He's a musician and recording engineer, so he gets a lot of coverage from gigs, recordings, other groups he's recorded, etc.

I guess one could further distinguish self-published Googlemass (like this blog, which includes my name only because i produce it) from public Googlemass. In my case, most of the former comes from conference and academic papers, and postings to news groups (and one home sale listing).