Yesterday it was announced that Google has gone all language-y on the web, updating its algorithms to understand not only the words being searched, but also the relationship between words. This is known as search semantics, and it is Google’s newest attempt to impress the web public with relevant search results.

Aside from the new word-relationship component, Google has also increased the characters devoted to summary paragraphs that attempt to pin down what people are searching for. In a recent blog post Google search quality team technical lead Ori Allon and snippets team engineer Ken Wilder wrote that the company “[is] deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search. We are now able to target more queries, more languages, and make our suggestions more relevant to what you actually need to know.”

Heretofore Internet search services have focused on matching key words typed into query boxes with words at websites or in other online data. The newest generation of Internet users has caused a rise in demand for semantic searches that go beyond matching words to actually understanding what sentences or combinations of words mean. The trick, from a company stand point, has been whether or not adequate technology can be developed to process the increasingly complex searches with the high speed that Internet users have come to expect.

Not content with their current position behind Google in terms of search, Microsoft has recently stated that it is testing a Kumo.com semantic search engine. The hope is that the new search technology will be more popular than Microsoft’s current Live Search service, catapulting it beyond Yahoo! and Google.

As of Tuesday Google has rolled out semantic search capabilities in 37 languages. Some examples given by Wilder and Allon included a search in Russian for “fortune-telling with cards” which brought up search results for “tarot” and “divination.” Conversely, a Google search in English for “principles of physics” generated suggestions about “big bang” and “quantum mechanics.”

Keen (or tech wonky, take your pick) folks have recently noted that Twiter has gone all SEO on us. Twitter, it seems, has optimized its title tags. This could turn out to make Twitter an instant SEO tool, launching people to the top of Google.

While this author hasn’t seen much change in his Google profile with the Twitter tweak, it is only a matter of time before Google re-indexes the profile page, which should shove it up a little bit. New users, especially businesses, will feel the larger ramifications of this little move by Twitter. In essence, open a Twitter account get a spot in the top 10 (page one) of a Google search. Not bad. There are a ton of SEO companies that would love to have such a sure fire tool at their finger tips, and now, well, they do. Other social media companies are adopting this approach, Facebook among them. The end result is more personal branding for individuals, and easier corporate branding for companies. Instead of having to commit to time and labor intensive approaches like blogs and forums, people will find the easiest, most effective way to secure those results, be it Twitter or some other service.

With the rise and blossoming of online networking sites like LinkedIn and ClaimID, many people, especially younger people, are doing the majority of their business networking online. This phenomenon is not anything new, and it has been covered in this blog and elsewhere.

But while it may be easier to sit in front of the computer screen and interact with your peers, it is hard to think that interpersonal relationships can ever be fully fleshed out (if you will) in the digital sphere. Face-to-face networking will never go away. The information on the Internet is not always accurate (although that doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant, according to Google’s algorithms), and there is a lot to be said for looking someone in the eyes.

Today people should try to balance their “new school” digital networking with the “old school” tried and true methods. The approach will literally double the amount of chances a person has to make an impact with a potential employer, and the effort required to do so is not unreasonable (point of fact, until a few years the “old school” method was the only game in town).

LinkedIn and other popular business networking sites thrive because they offer an alternative to actually speaking with a fellow networker. The information you put in the profile becomes the equivalent of a hand shake and a greeting. Thus, a user profile, for business purposes, should be looked at as an opportunity to distinguish yourself as someone others want to know and be connected to.

There are small and effective steps one can take to achieve this. Focus on brevity. 100 words is enough to grab someone’s attention and establish a positive image. If done correctly, a LinkedIn profile can, for practical purposes, be the difference between just another interview and a job offer. Conversely, a poorly written profile can have you knocked out of the running before you even get started.

Many employers look at LinkedIn as a sort of research tool. A resume can only say so much about a person, and employers are always looking to find out the little bits about a potential employee that are not immediately apparent. This fact has had disastrous consequences for some people whose Facebook and MySpace profiles contain otherwise unflattering images/language/etc. We’ve blogged that story here more than once.

Online business networking profiles are still just a piece of the puzzle, though. A successful blend of the old and the new networking techniques will counteract the deficiencies inherent in both approaches. A human touch in the new digital landscape goes a long way towards maintaining awareness and crafting image, while drawing in more localized business and opening channels previously untapped.

A recent article from Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald reveals the plans of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to fine people who create hyperlinks to sites on the Authority’s official blacklist. Which raises the question, how much is a hyperlink worth? The Australian Communications and Media Authority recently threatened the host of an online broadband discussion forum with an $11,000/day fine over a link, if that’s any indication.

 At present ACMA’s list of banned sites doesn’t impact Aussies too much, but that could all change if their government begins to apply a proposed Internet filtering program. Until then web surfers from Down Under may feel that they’re OK, but this most recent revelation shows how far ACMA is willing to go to control Australians’ activities online.

 Wikileaks, a site that has been placed on ACMA’s blacklist had this to say: “The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship.” Wikileaks has come under fire from regulatory bodies for its mission to publish anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, or religious documents. Wikileaks has exposed the banned list of sites of several countries, including Thailand, Denmark and now Australia.

 Regarding ACMA’s efforts to restrict user access to Wikileaks, Electronic Frontiers Australia noted how ACMA’s own list of banned sites may someday find itself in the public sphere. “We note that, not only do these incidents show that the ACMA censors are more than willing to interpret their broad guidelines to include a discussion forum and document repository, it is demonstrably inevitable that the Government’s own list is bound to be exposed itself at some point in the future. The Government would serve the country well by sparing themselves, and us, this embarrassment.”

 Australia has become a new focus for those concerned about controlling information on the Internet, with Reporters Without Borders placing the South Pacific nation on its “watch list” of countries that are enforcing anti-democratic internet restrictions.

 The larger report from Reporters Without Borders on the state of freedom of information on the Internet was seized by Australian Senator Scott Ludlam, who is quoted as saying “This report demolished the Communications Minister’s contention that Australia is just following other comparable democracies, we are not. The Government is embarking on a deeply unpopular and troubling experiment to fine-tune its ability to censor the Internet. I agree with Reporters Without Borders. If you consider this kind of net censorship in the context of Australia’s anti-terror laws, it paints a disturbing picture indeed.”

 However, dissenting groups are lauding the proposed Internet censorship scheme. Citizens such as Jim Wallace, the head of the Australian Christian Lobby, have expressed their desire to see the sex industry and online gambling sites go broke as a result of the censorship scheme.

According to police in Eau Claire County, the woman allegedly posted a profile of her ex-boyfriend on Craigslist under “casual encounters.” The “casual encounters” section of CraigsList is commonly used for illicit sexual hookups, and the woman reportedly set up the profile on the Internet indicating (falsely) that her ex-boyfriend wanted other men to call him at work and “talk dirty.”

When her ex received such a call from an unknown male who proceeded to do the dirty talking the ex-boyfriend immediately questioned what was going on. When he got home the ex went on online where he saw the Craigslist personal ad beckoning dirty talk, complete with pictures of himself. Then he called Altoona police to report the false profile.

With a little digging authorities were able to locate the man’s ex-girlfriend, and she is now charged with causing harm through identity theft, which could send her to prison for three years if convicted.

Reputation.com has seen these identity spoofing sorts of attacks occur in the past. It pays to be civil in real life, and it pays dividends to remain diligent online when it comes to your personal online profile.

Recently Twitter added a new level of functionality to its site, incorporating a search feature into the main page. The development had been announced in February, and many in the industry see the move as a step towards profitability and –possibly– a threat to Google’s status as the Lord of the Search Engines.

While Twitter is not at present a direct threat to Google, the addition of search functionality does put it squarely in the same arena as Facebook and Google. In addition to the search function, (which, it should be noted was always available at search.twitter.com, but as of March 6th has appeared on more user pages) Twitter is also adding a “trends” function that will display the most popular recent topics of site traffic. No doubt, Google and Facebook, which have both been looking for ways to expand their efforts in the social networking sphere, will take a long look at this development to see if they can innovate, copy or destroy.

“A search function offers opportunities to sell online advertising. For years there’s been a notion of capturing eyeballs and, once you have them on the site, leveraging that relationship for additional revenues,” Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT Research, said in an interview. “I can see how it would work for certain people in an organization, but it can suck the time out of your day,” King said. “It’s not quite a defined benefit yet.”

Twitter has risen in prominence very rapidly, but with the increased popularity has come a few issues, particularly concerns over phishing vulnerabilities. Last year there was a widely-reported Twitter-based phishing campaign designed to steal account data with promises of an iPhone. Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, cautioned that privacy issues surrounding text messages may arise in connection with Twitter in the future.

With so many social networks on the web today, and so many users flocking to them, how is the average netizen supposed to know where they belong? Never fear, Reputation.com is here to give you some guidance.

First, some background. The Internet itself is as a sort of social network and has always been. Beginning with ARPAnet, then bulletin boards and Usenet, on to the World Wide Web and the current cast of MySpace wannabes, social networks are at their core just about people communicating with other people.

As an extension of this concept it is important to realize that most every social network today — MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, etc. – has groups that cater to specific interests. In to fixed gear bikes? There’s a group for that. Did you attend the University of Montana? There’s a group for that. Think that Chris Gaines is NOT Garth Brooks? Well, there’s no group for that, but you could start one! Point being, social networks are built for people to use them, and in addition to features such as blogs, forums, personal profile pages, event invitations, and comments, there are myriad ways to wring the maximum benefit from social networks.

So, which social network do you choose? Most Internet-users tend to follow a pattern when it comes to social networks: They dabble in a few off the bat and then settle for a smaller number of networks that they can maintain a more regular presence on. You can save yourself a little trouble and time by starting with the social networks your friends currently inhabit. It shouldn’t take much work, depending on the site, to link up with existing profiles and start networking like a pro. Over time you may discover that you’re just not that into one network or the other. That’s OK. There are many more out there to choose from, and although the site will miss you it likely has many, many more users so you won’t be missed for long.

That being said, there are some things to keep in mind as you flirt with social networking.

1. Never pay to join a social network. There are so many social networks on the Internet, why someone would pay to be a part of the action is beyond this author. Maybe it has something to do with “premiumization?”

2. Protect your assets online. Be careful when using personal information online. Net newbies are prime targets for scammers, from phishers to exiled Nigerian queens.

3. You don’t have to be friends with everybody. Oftentimes a new user to a social network will be inundated with friend requests. If you haven’t met these people in real life assume that they are roping you into a “spam-paign” to push Viagra through comments on your page.

At present, it is estimated that roughly 1/5 of patients use doctor review websites. Given recent trends in that sector of the web, including a recent Wall Street Journal/Harris poll, the outlook for the coming years is growth. The Wall Street Journal poll indicates that over 90% of patients are interested in referring to doctor ratings for information on trust, communications, medical knowledge, availability and office environment. There will also be a bump in the numbers due to sheer generational mathematics as more young people, who are comfortable using the Internet to guide their decisions, mature and begin to access health care more often.

Given this trend, what’s the doctor supposed to do? There were certainly no tests on how to manage Yelp reviews back in Med school. Don’t worry, Reputation.com, the Internet leader in online reputation management, has some useful tips for doctors that may help influence online reputation while minimizing bad reviews:

1. Create and complete profiles for yourself on sites that rank doctors.

This is the first step, and arguably the most important. A lot of managing online reputation is about establishing authority, so get out there early on and dominate the space. Sites like WebMD give doctors the chance to add information about their practice online, and the cost to doctors is only a few minutes to register. The benefit in having current and accurate information about a practice online cannot be understated, and web-savvy patients will recognize the efforts to engage them online and listen to their feedback.

2. Guide your patients regarding doctor-rating sites.

It is impossible, and morally questionable, to prevent patients from using websites that rate doctors. However, doctors can help themselves and their patients at the same time by determining which sites provide the most reputable and relevant information and then directing patients to them. As the number of these types of sites continues to grow, expect to see items like cost, comments and outcome information in addition to numerical ratings. Forewarned is forearmed, and being aware of which sites have the best, most accurate information will help doctors and patients benefit the most from this technology. Something as simple a handout with some cursory information about the websites you have chosen will go a long way toward keeping patients informed and helping them not only make good decisions about which sites to use, but alto to think of their doctor in a positive light.

3. Create an easy-to-use system for patients to give their feedback.

Without a doubt, the one thing medical professionals don’t want are negative user-generated comments on the Internet. Surprisingly, less than 10% of comments on the average user-generated feedback site are negative. Unfortunately, in terms of human cognition these scant traces of negativity have a disproportionate affect on peoples’ opinions, and conversely a doctor’s reputation online. Often a patient vents negatively online because it is the most convenient way to express their frustrations and they are unaware of any alternative. The curious analog to this situation is that most doctors find fault with online rating services because there is no way to respond to negative comments.

One very effective and simple way to discourage negative comments on a third party review site is to have an open and active email address. Seriously, it’s that easy. You won’t completely eliminate ticked off patients or those looking to grind an ax, but by sending a simple email to a patient after an appointment, making a brief follow-up call or sending out a mailer a doctor goes a long way towards stealing someone’s righteous thunder. In the office, a well-placed sign that invites patients to express themselves, coupled with the necessary forms, can have a tremendous affect towards making people feel comfortable talking to a doctor or his staff about their experiences, rather than the entire Internet.

4. Monitor You Reputation Online

By keeping abreast of issues that are commonly brought up when a doctor’s office is mentioned, that doctor has an opportunity to make relatively simple and effective changes that will nip the problem in the bud. Doctors may be surprised to learn that the “biggest” problems many patients have is their time in the waiting room or the tone of voice that the secretary used with them. Since review sites tend to value the most recent reviews as most relevant, doctors who address things in a timely fashion give themselves maximum benefit. Sometimes acknowledging the problem early on goes a long way to assuaging fears that the office is somehow hopelessly mismanaged. Again, patients appreciate the attentiveness and engagement.

5. Encourage the use of doctor-rating sites.

It might seem counter-intuitive, but it is a good idea since the vast majority of comments on review sites are positive. Dissatisfied patients frequently make a bigger show of their feelings, but they are substantially outnumbered in most cases. The more patients you have writing reviews, the more positive recognition you are bringing to your name, while at the same time improving the site’s accuracy. Everyone wins! A lack of positive reviews is, more often than not, not a sign of a displeased patient base. On the contrary, it is probably because the patients with something good to say are unaware of doctor review sites, or the idea hasn’t even occurred to them.

Doctors should be proactive about asking patients to rate them online. Steps as simple as sending patients a follow-up email after a visit, giving them a card to take with them, and even drawing attention to existing positive reviews can be very good, yet subtle ways to get people talking about their doctor in a positive way online. Care should be exercised not to pressure patients, but encourage them to share their positive experiences with others.

Two nurses in Lake Geneva, Washington have been fired from their jobs at Mercy Walworth Medical Center for allegedly photographing a patient and posting the pictures on the Internet. Why, you might ask, did these women take a photo of a patient and place it on the Internet? Because the patient happened to be a man with a sex device stuck up his rectum, and the picture was an X-ray.

 If you don’t see the humor, don’t worry — neither did the Walworth County Sheriff’s Department. An investigation was launched after the nurses’ coworker made an anonymous call alerting the Sheriff’s Department that a nurse took pictures of a patient with her cell phone and posted them on her Facebook page. “There were two nurses that independently took a picture each of an X-ray of a patient,” Walworth County Undersheriff Kurt Picknell said.

 According to police, the patient had been admitted to the emergency room with an unknown object wedged in his rectum. When the nurse was questioned, she explained that she and a co-worker had taken the photos at the center of the matter once they realized the object was in fact a sex toy. The police discovered discussion of the photo and incident on the nurse’s Facebook page, but the actual image itself was not posted.

 Further investigation by local police has not turned up the photo, and no witnesses have come forward in the case. The nurse has since deleted her Facebook account, and Picknell has referred the case to the FBI. “We’ve notified federal authorities of this allegation to see if there are federal violations, most notably HIPAA violations, patient rights,” he said.

The popular news and comment forum site Topix has recently come into the mainstream media and legal spotlights for its part in what may be a revolution in anonymous speech across the Internet. 

What began as an open forum discussing the published allegations against a Texas couple in their rural town quickly spiraled into something much, much more heated. Even thought the couple was ultimately found not guilty on charges of sexual assault, comments were flying fast and furious across the forums accusing the couple of everything from pedophilia to drug abuse.

In an effort to combat these postings, the Texas couple became the latest case in a recent spate of folks who are suing the Internet. Turning their attentions to Topix, they are suing the site to release information about individual commenters and their identities. The 365 page lawsuit identities 178 anonymous commenters, individuals alleged to have posted defamatory comments about the couple. The couple is basing their complaint on the claims that the posts lead to a sullying of their reputations online, as well as causing a downturn in their offline businesses. Since Topix allows both registered and unregistered comments to be posted on its forums, it is likely that much of the information will be nothing more than IP addresses, which will then have to be tracked back to individual ISPs to identify actual users.

Reputation.com CEO, Michael Fertik, spoke to ABCNews.com about the current state of law, saying “The law as it currently stands is an accomplice because it creates no incentive whatsoever for Web sites to review or police themselves from content that is potentially devastating to real people and real lives.” Basically, Topix has no obligation under current laws to take down the offensive content, and without a change to the current laws governing free speech on the Internet the law essentially enables anonymous online defamation.

A quick survey of the case law in this area reveals that the law is certainly evolving. In 2008, two students at Yale Law School won a court case that ordered AutoAdmit.com, a college and graduate school admissions Web forum, to reveal the IPs of anonymous posters who libeled the women online. Three years prior a Delaware court denied a request to unmask a blogger charged with defamation by a local councilman. There is certainly no hard and fast rule about free speech and the Internet, but the general consensus is that if anonymous comments are found to be defamatory by a court, that court can command the Web site to supply any significant information it has about the posters.