Also known as ego surfing. Exactly what you'd think. To perform a vanity search is to enter your name (first, first and last, or full, depending on how common a name it is) in a decent search engine to find out how many places you show up on the web. Vanity searches are useful for determining useful things like how popular you are, how much of a geek you are (how many different newsgroup threads turn up?), and who your stalkers are, past and present. In some cases, it works better to search for an often-used nickname.

It's something to do at that point when the web has ceased to offer anything compelling, but you're not quite ready to go to bed.

Turning Ego Surfing to Your Advantage

Forget paying for classmates.com! If you have a page that's crawled by Google, grab your yearbook.On one of your web pages enter the names of people you liked in high school. Add in terms like your home town, your high school, etc. People ego surfing for say "John Smith, Springfield" will find your page and if they're keen to contact you, well, they will!