{"id":66,"date":"2011-07-06T20:29:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T20:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/2011\/07\/06\/my-ethan-lewis-problem\/"},"modified":"2019-03-31T18:40:57","modified_gmt":"2019-03-31T22:40:57","slug":"my-ethan-lewis-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/2011\/07\/06\/my-ethan-lewis-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"My Ethan Lewis problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a guilty secret.\u00a0 I am an ego-surfer.\u00a0 “Ego-surfers” periodically type their names into major search engines to see what comes up.\u00a0 According to Wikipedia<\/a>, this term has been around since 1995, which is approximately how long I’ve been doing this for, back when I would get different results on Lycos<\/a> (now powered by Bing), AltaVista<\/a> (ditto), Yahoo<\/a>! (same story) and other search engines that no longer really exist.\u00a0 Why do I do this?\u00a0 Well, there are a few reasons, but mainly they revolve around my unquenchable need to know what strangers are saying about me.\u00a0 Also, my name is not that common, which makes it easier to search for.\u00a0 According to HowManyofMe.com<\/a>, there are only 49 people named “Ethan Lewis” (besides yours truly) in the country.\u00a0 I don’t know if this is totally accurate, but I think it is safe to say that there are fewer “Ethan Lewis”-es than there are “Richard Brown”-s, for instance.<\/span><\/p>\n

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On the other hand, in a disturbing trend, “Ethan” is becoming a much more popular name.\u00a0 When I was a kid, I never knew any other Ethans.\u00a0 My mother gave me my name because her hero, John Wayne, had named his son Ethan<\/a>, and “if it’s good enough for the Duke, it’s good enough for me”.\u00a0 I met my first Ethan at Downtown Sounds in Northampton, Massachusetts<\/a> in 1991.\u00a0 He was working there, and when one of his colleagues walked by and said “Ethan”, we both turned and said “yes?”\u00a0 Interestingly, I was his first Ethan as well.\u00a0 But that’s not a big surprise, since according to the Social Security Administration, Ethan was the 494th most popular boy’s name in 1970, the year of my birth.\u00a0 Now, however, it is the 2nd most popular, in both 2009 and 2010–I better get ready for some verbal whiplash<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another thing that affects my ego-surfing is that I want to be the top result on Google<\/a> when searching for “Ethan Lewis”<\/a>, but I don’t want to do any work to get there. As you probably know, part of what makes a search result higher on Google is how many other pages link to that page.\u00a0 I’ve had my own domain (www.ethanlewis.org<\/a>) for over a decade now, but I have never made a concerted effort to “optimize” the site to trick Google into making me #1.\u00a0 If I get there, I want to earn it!\u00a0 This is somewhat analogous to when my father used to try to pass people on the highway using nothing but the cruise control.\u00a0 He said that he was willing the car to pass the other one, no human intervention necessary.\u00a0 Try it sometime, it’s fun!<\/span><\/p>\n

Getting back on topic, the Bing search engine has been out (actually since the second week of Bing), I HAVE<\/b> been the top “Ethan Lewis” on that search engine<\/a>.\u00a0 But Bing is less easy to use, because of my reflexive reliance on Google (due partly to using their Chrome web browser, and mostly due to force of habit).\u00a0 Sometimes to streamline searches I use Bing-vs-Google.com<\/a>, which is pretty cool.<\/span><\/p>\n

As you can see if you clicked the previous link, my b\u00eate noire is an economics professor at Dartmouth named Ethan G. Lewis.\u00a0 For years, Ethan G. Lewis has been number one on Google, and I am number three or four (the top places belonged to “Big G”, as I like to think of him).\u00a0 Lately I’ve been picking up the pace, but I still lag behind Big G.\u00a0 “Big G” seems like a nice enough chap<\/a>; I’ve read some of his papers, and considering that I’ve been following him since his college days, I feel like I know him.\u00a0 And while he and I are not Facebook friends, it seems that we have a number of things (besides our first and last names) in common<\/a>.\u00a0 So, while I would never wish him ill, and I am glad that he continues to find success in his professional life, I do sort of hope that “Big G” will go on sabbatical soon, giving me a chance to overtake him on Google.\u00a0 Wait a second!\u00a0 Google is often referred to as “Big G”<\/a>.\u00a0 Could this be why they’ve ranked Ethan G. higher than Ethan me?\u00a0 Sounds like a conspiracy to me<\/a>…<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nUpdate:\u00a0 My friend, \u00fcber-blogger Sascha Freudenheim (the #1 Sascha Freudenheim on Google<\/a>) has some thoughts about this post at his site: www.sascha.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Check it out!<\/span><\/p>\n

Views: 236<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a guilty secret.\u00a0 I am an ego-surfer.\u00a0 “Ego-surfers” periodically type their names into major search engines to see what comes up.\u00a0 According to Wikipedia, this term has been around since 1995, which is approximately how long I’ve been doing this for, back when I would get different results on Lycos (now powered by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,327],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-common-names","category-ethan-lewis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}