For as much as we occasionally criticize Google here at the Reputation.com Blog, nobody can dispute the company’s considerable innovations and contributions to the Internet. A true juggernaut of the tech world, it sometimes seems like everyone else in the Silicon Valley is merely trying to keep up with the big G. I mean, you have to be big when your company’s name is listed as a verb in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Of course, the reason Google became the king of the Internet is the company’s unrivaled search technology. Originally founded to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” Google differentiated itself from competitors with the development of the link analysis algortihm PageRank.Through PageRank, Google became the place where people could go to find the “best” information on the Internet as determined by popularity, authority, and influence.

As the Internet has evolved, however, Google’s hold on search might be slipping. Between hard-charging competitors like Microsoft’s Bing and an ever-evolving Internet (30% of Internet searches are now people related), perhaps it is time for Google to take the next step in search? But what could this be? Where is search headed? In a recent post for the marketing blog Threeminds, Marshall Clark suggests Google invest in something he calls “PageRank for people.”

From the post:

In the physical world, your reputation follows you. If you’re the world’s foremost expert on AJAX, your opinion on the topic will be respected wherever you go. Imagine if the same held true online. Publish an article on an obscure web dev blog, it ranks highly, because hey – you’re an expert. Pen a guest column on “AJAX and You” for Women’s Day magazine and it ranks great, because you’re the best in your field. Post a comment on the blog of an up-and-coming developer and that post gets a boost, because one of the luminaries in the industry judged it worth weighing in on. These are just a few of the possibilities, I’m sure there are plenty more.

Mapping reputation to people instead of URLs makes PageRank portable. It’s PageRank for people.

Marshall fleshes out the concept further, saying:

What we’re talking about here is a fundamental shift in how we track and evaluate content online. One that mirrors how we assess information in the physical world: “Who’s this guy talking? What’s he done before? Do I like him? Do people I like, like him?”

Some of the criteria the PageRank for People algorithm would look at:
• Topics of expertise
• Number of links to your posts and the reputation of those doing the linking
• Number of comments and the commenters’ reputations
• Who’s in your community (those linking, commenting, reposting your content frequently)
• Ratings, weighted by the reputation of each rater
• Where you’ve been published
• How long you’ve been online
• Maybe even semantic analysis of your content (are you a troll?)

It is an interesting concept and one which we spend a lot of time thinking about at Reputation.com. One of the sad truths of the Internet is that it takes very little effort to permanently tarnish someone’s good name. If Google moved toward a verifiable PageRank for people model, perhaps it would not be so easy to slander someone online. By taking a strong pro-active stance toward one’s online reputation, you could effectively mitigate a personal attack from an anonymous stranger. After all, who is a more authoritative source of information on yourself than yourself?

What do you think? Is PageRank for people the next step for Google? What are some pitfalls for a people-focused Google search?

In New York City, an emergency medical technician is on trial for misdemeanor charges of official misconduct after posting pictures of a young woman’s murdered corpse to the popular social networking website, Facebook. The EMT claims that he took the picture instinctively due to his years of experience as a detective and posted it to Facebook accidentally when he uploaded a number of pictures from his cell phone.

While it is probable the EMT did not intend to post the picture, the fact of the matter is that he did, causing one family’s painful loss to be exposed to the world. Even if Facebook were to quickly remove the image in question, there is no guarantee that it could not be copied and saved somewhere else only to pop back up again later and spread throughout the Internet.

This unfortunate scenario became all too real for Christos and Lesli Catsouras, who have spent the last two years trying to remove pictures of their daughter Nikki’s fatal car accident from hundreds of thousands of websites online. In the Catsouras family’s case, it was an officer of the California Highway Patrol who was responsible for taking the pictures and posting them online. The story of the Catsouras family’s efforts to remove the grisly photos and gain a sense of closure over Nikki’s death was recently profiled at Newsweek.

While it can be argued that morbid curiousity is an inherent component of the human condition, the vitriol with which individuals circulate and share disturbing images online defies the limits of acceptable behavior. If everyone took a proactive stance to help make the Internet a safer and more decent place, people like the Catsouras family would not have to fear opening their e-mails. To learn more about how you can help the Catsouras family, visit the website Support Nikki.

Reputation.com founder and CEO Michael Fertik was recently an expert guest on the Dr. Phil show, where he discussed Online Reputation Management and the importance of proactively controlling one’s Google results.

Reputation.com would like to thank the Dr. Phil program for educating parents, students and professionals about the importance of Online Reputation Management.

Over the last few months I have observed an interesting change in the world of Facebook. Where I used to see friends socializing, I now see mothers producing safety-themed wall posts on my friends’ pages. Where I used to see old classmates partying it up, I now see pictures of younger siblings conducting acts better left undocumented. Call it the new Facebook Family.

The evidence of the new Facebook Family is everywhere. Directly below my friend’s recent post decrying a party-induced headache is his mother’s serene avatar, reminding him politely about the dangers of drinking. Distant cousins who I might not see for years at a time now receive glimpses into my daily life and inquire about personal family matters on a regular basis. It is obvious that there is a new family present in the once esoteric world of social media, and this burgeoning group has drastically altered the core dynamics of our digital space.

As a brash teen with a passion for creative media outlets, I relished my early social media experiences with MySpace, LiveJournal, and Friendster. These digital spaces were exciting because I felt like I belonged to an innovative new web faction separate from popular culture. My grandma didn’t have a MySpace profile and Wal-Mart wasn’t going to post comments on my LiveJournal posts. 

But all that has changed. The geeks, hackers, and techies are now shoulder to shoulder with moms and business executives in freshly commercialized social media channels. I even heard Tom Hanks talking about Twitter last night on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. It appears that, as the social media family continues to expand into new domains and infiltrate the general public’s collective conscious, the subculture that spawned it all is destined to quietly slip away into a new corner of the Web.

I believe social media’s move into the mainstream is positive. The amazing benefits of this space are now accessible to everyone. Average Internet users now wield the tools to control their online reputation and identity, empowering average people to explore a world that was once extremely difficult for outsiders to understand.

However, this drastic accessibility shift has also changed the nature of social media. Savvy advertisers and recruiters were successful in early Web 2.0 channels because everything was still relatively “underground” in the eyes of users. Now that your mom Tweets all day long, the edginess early social media marketers once enjoyed has been severely incapacitated. 

It is hard to say whether the new Facebook Family has inhibited social media from influencing interactions. However, if our favorite social media sites weaken with an influx of ads, fake-users, and a general loss of DIY spirit, it could signal the death of the industry. I like to remain optimistic. I believe a strong base of users reflecting their true online identities and a spirit of positive interaction will help maintain the integrity of the new family in which we find ourselves.

What do you think? How have you adapted to the new Facebook Family?

Anna Vander Broek has a smart article over at Forbes that profiles Online Identity Management, Online Reputation Management and Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik. Specifically, the article looks at the impact Google results have for job seekers. The piece examines how potential employees and professionals can optimize their Google results and cultivate a professional online identity. Quoting from the page:

“Treat Google like your résumé,” says Michael Fertik, founder of the online reputation management service, Reputation.com. If your first five Google hits highlight your old job as a market analyst it may be hard to sell yourself as a travel writer.

[SNIP]

“Know what you want and who you are,” says Fertik. This may mean you need to choose what to keep online and what to remove. You don’t always show your serious side to your friends or your party side to your boss. The same rules apply online.

If you’re unhappy with your Google hits, there are a few things you can do. Think about using a service like Fertik’s own Reputation.com, which can help you manipulate your Google results, among other things, pushing positive links higher and negative ones lower. Giant sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will be higher in Google searches, so focus on those sites first.

[SNIP]

“Google is now a utility for every life transaction,” says Fertik. “You have to keep yourself fresh.”

Keeping information about yourself current, updated and relevant will ensure that your online identity is an accurate reflection of who you are.