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Google Reputation Management Issue

Before I begin, I want to be perfectly clear that I appreciate Google for it’s recent efforts to integrate blog comments into search results. It is both interesting and not something that can be perfected quickly.

However, I’d like to illustrate fully an example of where this is a concern for me and others whom may not even know about it until it creates a problem. This issue revolves around blog comments not made by an individual that show up in the description fields when Googling one’s name. Please review the following example web page that explains the ‘Google Reputation Management Issue’ before reading further. It’s important that you visualize what I’m saying both proceeding.

These days, it is now common practice for people to search for information about individuals on a search engine before a business discussion or a job interview. Due to the nature of these searches and the types of important decisions being made off of them, it is critical that they be accurate. If it isn’t, miscommunication or even disaster can strike. Due to this search engines have an ethical responsibility to present search results that are an accurate presentation of reality.

Let’s examine my case, on May 16th, I posted a comment in response to Josh Kopelman’s Blog entry regarding “53,651”. The following is what I posted in response to his post: “Great post that reminds us of the importance of true customers and looking past your inner circle.” (please see screen shot on other web page)

However, the Google description tag reads: “Posted by: David Dalka | May 16m 2006 at 11:29AM. Hey Josh, you said it! As one of your first investors in Infonautics wasn’t that the pre-www? …” (please see screen shot on other web page)

At present, I’m neither a investor of this level nor a millionaire. What if someone did not click through to read the real web page? Would they have likely formed the impression that I was an investor in Infonautics? The possibility certainly exists. Where this would be a larger concern is if the post after mine was not professional or even worse contained hate or spam links to porn sites. This would not be good.

So I’d like to please ask all web companies, not just Google, to take extra care in the future before putting releases in the live environment that could affect an individual’s reputation due to inaccurate presentation. Stated another way, “beta software” usage which only hinders an individual is OK, while the public release of “beta results” is discouraged as it can cause significant reputation damage. Thank you for your attention and support of this important issue and making the Internet a more accurate place. 

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Indy 500 Television Coverage

ABC USA television had an interesting new way to show commercials during today’s Indy 500. During the commercial breaks they continued to show the content of the program! The race was on the left side in a slightly smaller box than the commercial on the right side. In addition, right above the commercial the organization’s logo was prominently displayed.

I wish to applaud this innovation as it creates a stickier experience for the user with out content interruption while creating a new opportunity for branding with the logo for the advertiser. This is clearly a place where concepts on the web are migrating to new mediums and was very interesting to see. I don’t know if it would have struck me as interesting as it did without the things I’ve been learning about search engine marketing.

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I’m #1!!! (literally)

With the most recent index in Google, my site is now in the #1 position on Google and MSN for the term “David Dalka”. I’m also #2 on Yahoo! It’s impossible to isolate the influence of blog crawlers versus new links to this site, though it would be interesting to know which played a stronger role in my rise.

For the search term “Dalka” alone on Google, I’m now #11, up from like #362 or something like that. That is a dramatic rise!

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Yahoo! and eBay Form Strategic Partnership

Yahoo! users will be able to buy goods using Paypal. This is good for eBay but not unique, other internet retailers, like newegg.com already allow this.

“Yahoo! will become the exclusive third-party provider of all graphical advertisements throughout the eBay.com site” states the press release. That is significant.

I would like to learn more about exactly what this statement means, “Yahoo! and eBay have also agreed to collaborate on ways to increase the quality and comprehensiveness of Yahoo! Web search results for eBay.com and to provide Yahoo! search users with more up-to-date listings from the millions of products on the eBay.com marketplace, with the goal to create a better search experience by enabling shoppers to more easily find relevant eBay listings.” I don’t necessarily want eBay results in each search result. I will reserve judgment on this issue until I see how it’s actually implemented. It should be interesting to see how this develops.

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Yahoo! Analyst Day Recap – Part 1

Last Thursday, Yahoo! held their annual Analyst Day. The presentation lasted several hours and was both interesting and transparent about the future direction of the company.

This event coincided with Yahoo!’s new home page launch which is clearly designed to have the visitor not only linger but be engaged. Lloyd Braun outlined the Yahoo! Media Group’s current philosophy: “Leverage Yahoo!’s technology and global network to deliver the most innovative and engaging media experiences – for our audiences and advertisers.”

I really like the above statement because it shows that a customer focus on both two fronts – audiences and advertisers. The focus on more relevant ads matched with more relevant content is interesting and several examples about significant ROI lift were outlined during the presentation. When I have time, I will post some more thoughts on this event.  

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Comscore adds MySpace.com to it’s monthly search report

Comscore added MySpace.com’s search service to the monthly report about search engine market share:
“MySpace.com has been added to the search engine rankings for April 2006, coming in at 6th place with 43 million search queries performed (0.6 percent share of the U.S. search market).  Will this smaller player eventually be able to grab a substantial share of the search market due to the site’s remarkable popularity?”

I went over to MySpace.com and compared a few queries, it appears to be using Yahoo! search results as the source.

This made me wonder if as a part of this arrangement is Yahoo! has other parameters. It would be interesting to learn whether Yahoo! receives access to counting and indexing certain non-public MySpace.com content in return to determine popularity, does anyone know?