It is one of my policies here at AltSearchEngines to not talk about myself – unless it is to illustrate a search engine.  This blog is about alternative search engines, and that’s what each post should be about.

But there are exceptions to every rule, and a few weeks back I wrote a post entitled, “Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be bloggers” in order to give you a behind the scenes glimpse of blogging from my (male) perspective.  Kaila balanced it out with a post of her own as a female blogger.  So, if you’re interested, you can just follow those links.

Well, I feel another “glimpse” coming on (I can picture Richard now, his head in his hands, saying “Oh God, no…”) so if you were expecting another “Future of Search” article, you can just skip this one, although it very much relates to the alternative search engines at the very end.

This is how it works, for everything I list that I’m justifiably proud of, I get positive ego points.  But for anything that I am ashamed of, I get negative ego points.  Simple.

For example, when a reader leaves a comment after a post and says, “I love your blog and read it all the time,” those are worth +50 ego points each, times the last ten = +500.  Likewise, if I write a good post or get mentioned in someone else’s post and Kaila or someone else says “you rock!” those are worth +50 ego points each too, so that’s another +500 points for the last ten.  Grand total = +1,000 ego points.

But the other day, I realized that when readers sent in the names of cool search engines, I was posting them without attribution.  I didn’t like that, so I docked myself 50 ego points for the last ten of those and lost 500 points!  But now AltSearchEngines has a new policy; if a reader sends in a new alternative search engine and we post it, I write, “Thanks to Barbara for this great tip!” at the end, so that’s +500 points for the new policy, putting me right back at +1,000 points.

Now here’s a real loser.  A reader sent in a search engine tip to Read/WriteWeb, and a fellow writer picked it up.  I dashed off a rude email -  and this is key – before I read his post – only to discover that the post recommended AltSearchEngines! Ouch! That’s an immediate loss of 500 ego points! (Balance now +500 points.)

Then came the mention in Newsweek!  Fame! Fortune! Well, fame anyway. A whopping +1,000 ego points!  Surely this was the top; and then the famous Paris newspaper LeMonde read that article and contacted me, +500 more points!  At +2,000 ego points my hats were beginning to feel tight!

Then this morning I was reading my email and I saw a reference to a  post by a good friend that had not been copied to me.  Woosh!  Off goes the “humorous” (i.e. rude) email – and this is very key – before (do you see a pattern here?) I looked at the post.  “Hey, thanks for telling me, etc.”  Once the email was gone, I looked at the post – it was dated October 2006 – over a year ago.  This was much more than an “ouch.”  I had just accused a friend of leaving me out of his loop.  You can loose friends that way.  Go straight to jail, do not pass “Go,” and lose 3,000 ego points.  Now I was at -1,000 points and I felt sick.

So  what  does  this  have  to  do  with  alternative search  engines?  Alot.

There are three things that can benefit when you read this blog.

One, I can benefit.  I can try to make “Charles Knight” the name in search engines (the next Danny Sullivan -ha!). 

Or I can try to make “AltSearchEngines” the name in search engine blogs.  This morning (it was a busy morning) I read about Pandia’s Search Detective with their 25 top search related blogs, and AltSearchEngines was not one of them!  Don’t they know I was quoted in Newsweek?

I’ll give you four guesses what I did next, and yes, the first three don’t count.  Off went the emails!  Was I right to be proud of AltSearchEngines and consider it a “Top 25″ blog?  Maybe.  I saw it as my duty to champion the brand.

But there’s a third and final option.  The Alternative Search Engines.  Remember them?

This past week I wrote a post on a UPC Barcode search engine.  That’s where the attention belongs.  That’s what you (and I) should focus on.  My job is to leverage this blog in order to drive more people to explore the “most wonderful search engines you’ve never seen.”  That’s the mission.  If the spotlight strays from them to the blog itself or -shudder!- to me (The Great and Powerful Blogger!), that’s wrong.

So please come back tomorrow, because we’re going to hit the ground running and show you some more fantastic search engines, and we’re going to do it every single day.  Promise.