Real-Time Rep Management

With Google's introduction of real-time results into their SERPs this week, a new wrinkle appears for online reputation management. A Facebook privacy change has also sent shockwaves through the industry.

Google in Real-Time
If your name or brand is mentioned on sites like Twitter, it is likely to start appearing near the top of the search results. (Watch a video about real-time integration here.)

This matters for ORM because now all the little tweets of the world surrounding your brand or name become more visible to the generic searcher.

The 'fight' to manage how others perceive your name again extends beyond the Google top 10.

Facebook Drops a Bomb
Not wanting to be outdone, Facebook has announced new privacy settings that also complicate reputation management. In a release today, they've stated that users will now have to opt-out from having their status updates displayed to 'Everyone'.

Everyone includes the search engines.

The most troubling aspect of this announcement is that most users will not know to 'opt-out' to keep their status info private.

It's a shame, because this is a big deal when combined with Google's new real-time search.

Why?
Facebook has 350 million users and counting. That is huge compared to Twitter. Tweets in the SERPs? Eh . . . that's small potatoes.

Hundreds of millions of people having a policy changed on them overnight, which results in their mindless status updates popping up in the SERPs? Big.

We'll have to see how this plays out. Maybe the status updates will stay out of Google's grasp . . . but I'm guessing not.

People Just Don't Know
In watching over online rep management for 4 years, I know one thing - most people are clueless about what you can and can't find out about them using a search engine.

Google and Facebook just made it harder for the ignorant to have any protection whatsoever.

(image: wcouch)