Google Narcissist (BETA)
as Google's march to world dominance continues (their news maps service blows the competition away), it occured to me that there was one service that they weren't offering: e-mail notification when someone types your name into their search engine. all you would have to do was sign up with a name and e-mail address and they could send you a message to let you know that someone was looking you (or someone with the same name) up. of course it would work better for people with uncommon names, but it might be interesting for Emily Jones to see how often her name gets typed in as well. if perhaps that volume of e-mails is a bit much to be sending out, they could send out a weekly or monthly tally of your relative popularity; even if it's just you typing your own name in over and over again to boost your stats.
Comments
I love it! Someone send this idea to John Battelle's searchblog ASAP. I'm sure he can get the idea over to google.
Posted by: marc b. | February 18, 2005 11:40 AM
It's like caller ID but better!
Posted by: mas | February 18, 2005 01:06 PM
Right on about the maps service. The draggable feature just made online mapping much, much easier. Mapquest blows, anyway, thanks for the alternative.
Posted by: jake | February 18, 2005 02:06 PM
of course, it doesn't work with Safari...fuckin Mac!
Posted by: Phil | February 18, 2005 04:36 PM
I love this idea, not least for its complete lack of practical application.
Posted by: wisdomweasel | February 21, 2005 06:57 PM