The Reputation Economy

Managing your online identity in the age of Google

Kimberley R. Barker, MLIS Emerging Technology & Digital Initiatives Librarian

Claude Moore Health Sciences Library University of Virginia

In this presentation: • Defining the “reputation economy” • What is “Google Truth”? • How does Google work? • Defining online reputation management services

– Individual – Corporate

• Establishing a reputation management plan • Understanding the real-life ramifications of reputation

damage • Reputation restoration • Further resources

What is the “reputation economy”?

Refers to the way in which the standing of a product/person/institution/business is shaped by the contributions of end users.

• “wisdom of crowds”/crowdsourcing

– Nothing new

– Changes in technology mean that we use computers instead of the telephone or writing letters

Your own habits

• How many of you Google the following? – Job candidates

– Dates

– Children’s friends/counselors/teachers

– Doctors

– Products

– Hotels

– Restaurants

• How much are you influenced by what you find?

How would you react to an attack on your reputation?

Toni & Candace respond to a bad review on Yelp

Incidentally… • 2011 report on Yelp ratings by Harvard

Business School assistant professor Michael Luca: a one-star increase in the rating of an independent restaurant leads to a 5 to 9 percent increase in revenue.

• http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/12-016.pdf

Google is King

Data from Hitwise, 1/21/2012

Google is

STILL King

“Google Truth” • Defined as the automatic acceptance of

Google results as an accurate representation of reality

“Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet”

- Abraham Lincoln

How Google works (1 of 7)

• Google is comprised of three distinct parts

– Googlebot

– Indexer

– Query processor

• Each part has its own specific and unique function.

How Google works (2 of 7)

• Googlebot

– Composed of 1000’s of computers engaged in parallel processing:

• Requests & retrieves 1000’s of different pages simultaneously; does this two ways

– “Add URL” forms

– Find links via web crawling

» Fresh crawls

» Deep crawls

How Google works (3 of 7)

• Indexer

– Receives full texts of pages from Googlebot; stores them in databases

– Index sorts search terms alphabetically

• Ignores “stop words”

• Converts all text to lower-case

– Each entry in index stores list of documents with that search term and also the location within the text of that search term

How Google works (4 of 7)

• Query processor Multiple parts

•Search box

•“engine” that evaluates searches & matches to relevant documents

•Results formatter

How Google works (5 of 7)

How Google works (6 of 7) (It’s a popularity contest… sort of)

• PageRank

– Link analysis algorithm

– Page with higher rank displays higher in results list

– Google uses over 100 factors to determine rank

– How is PR calculated?

• Basically, the more times that a page is linked to determines its PR

– Built from this algorithm, which is used iteratively:

» PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

How Google works (7 of 7)

Hummingbird • Google replaced its algorithm in August,

2013

• The preceding seven slides are still valid

• Hummingbird is semantic; i.e., based on natural language queries

– Conversational search technology

– Uses Google’s Knowledge Graph

• Google is looking towards future

– 60% of Americans access Internet on mobile device

– Spoken searches

Why did I just spend 8 slides on Google?

• If you understand how Google works, you will understand how to:

– Positively increase your online presence

– Monitor your reputation

– Formulate a basic reputation restoration plan

– Understand when you need to seek professional help

What is ORM (online reputation management)?

• Basically, “…the practice of making people and businesses look their best on the Internet.”

www.reputation.com

• For whom is this service? – Individuals – Professionals – Institutions

•Who can perform this service?

•Reputation management professionals •People just like you

ORM is big business • “American companies will spend $2.2

billion in 2012 for "reputation and presence management," according to Jed Williams, senior analyst for BIA / Kelsey, a media-consulting firm based in Chantilly, Va.By 2015, that sum will grow to $5 billion, says Williams.”

– “Can you erase your online blunders? With effort, and luck, it's possible”; Lacitis, Erik; Seattle Times; July 29, 2012

Should individuals/institutions bother with ORM?

• In my opinion, if you aren’t monitoring your reputation in the same way that you monitor your credit, you’re crazy.

Pew Internet & American Life’s Internet & Health Report 2013

http://www.pewinternet.org/Infographics/2013

/Health-and-Internet-2012.aspx

Social Media & Online Reputation matter

Some online healthcare ranking sites

• HealthGrades

Some online healthcare ranking sites

Rate MDs

Yelp again • Study shows high Yelp rating correlates

with better Hospital outcomes – Bardach NS, Asteria-peñaloza R, Boscardin WJ, Adams

dudley R. The relationship between commercial website ratings and traditional hospital performance measures in the USA. BMJ Qual Saf. 2012.

• http://www.imedicalapps.com/2013/02/yelp-hospital-outcomes/

Establishing a reputation management plan

• Begin monitoring your online presence

– Good

• Search for your name at least once per month

– Best

• Create a search alert for your name

•Check your privacy settings on all social media

•Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc

•Feed your online presence with positive content

•Blogging, Tweeting, profile sites, YouTube, professional directories, newsletters, etc.

Search results for me Kimberley R. Barker vs. Kimberley Barker

• Be aware of who might be looking for information about you

•Think about to what sites Google will direct searchers

•E.g., those searching for information on professors will be directed to sites such as RateMyProfessor, etc

•Accept the fact that no information does NOT equal a positive image and, in fact, can be viewed with suspicion

Establishing a reputation management plan

Reputation Restoration • First steps

– You will be hurt, scared, and angry. Take some time to process your emotions.

– Tell your family and trusted friends. You will need their support to get through this.

– Realize that you are not the first person whose reputation has been damaged- you are not alone.

Reputation Restoration – Realize that there exist tools to restore your

good name.

– Assess the damage; if severe, consult a professional reputation management consultant immediately. Accept that you cannot repair the damage on your own and that the issue won’t just go away.

– DO NOT respond with posts of your own.

Reputation Restoration (information drawn from

Chapter 12 of Wild West 2.0)

• Understand the problem

• Make a plan

• Implement the plan

Understand the problem I (WW 2.0, Chapter 12)

• What is the extent of the problem?

•Perform an online reputation audit (see Chapter 10 of WW 2.0)

•Comb carefully through first three pages of Google results, and then skim the next seven.

Understand the Problem II

• Find the source of negative content

• Use an Internet archive provider to check the URL’s of negative content. Try to determine where it began.

• Determine whether it is accidental or deliberate

• accidental- “name collision”- reinforcing cycle

• Deliberate- a lie about you; legitimate complaint

Make a plan (WW 2.0)

• Create a recovery road map – As in Chapter 10: create list of people who might

search for you – Create list of sites to which they are directed – Prioritize which sites to repair first- some smears

easier to repair than others

• Create recovery goals – Be realistic: it may be impossible to completely

expunge false information- News sites and some blogs will may always show up in top 10 results and only feeding positive content (and time) can remedy that.

– Pushing negative content to bottom of search results may be just as effective

Make a Plan

• Create recovery goals

– Be realistic: it may be impossible to completely expunge false information- News sites and some blogs will may always show up in top 10 results and only feeding positive content (and time) can remedy that.

– Pushing negative content to bottom of search results may be just as effective

Implement your plan (WW 2.0)

• Try to find a human

– Contact page administrator via form or email

– CALMLY explain the problem- you need his/her help!

– If a human will not help you, figure out from where that website is drawing its false information. Try to correct the information at the source (claim your online identity, etc)

Claim as many corners of the web as you can!

about.me

Also… • Sites like Yelp, Facebook, HealthGrades,

etc, are protected from liability for content on their sites by section 230 of the Communication Decency Act (CDA 230), part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act: – “no provider or user of an interactive

computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

Implement your plan (WW 2.0 Chapter 12)

• Malicious attacks – Determine seriousness of threat & frequency

• If a one-off, let it fade away

• If dedicated, persistent attacker, understand that no matter what you do, this person may continue to spread lies.

• Try to identify attacker

– Sometimes use info known only to a few

– Sometimes pseudonym is a clue

– Try through legal means- understand expensive and lengthy

Implement your plan (WW 2.0, Chapter 12)

• Choose your strategy

– Fight back directly

– Try to resolve offline (but proceed carefully)

– Try to isolate negative content indirectly; i.e., “Google walls”

• Create more positive & neutral content than attacker creates negative. Play the Google algorithm.

How does reputation restoration work? • Remember all of those slides about Google?

• ORM professionals will always be more effective than an individual simply because they can devote more resources to it.

The future of ORM • Just as institutions have attorneys, they will

have contracts with reputation management companies which cover:

– Institution itself

– Individuals who have support of the institution

After all, the reputations of its individuals affects the reputation of the institution.

Don’t be an ostrich!

• Not only SHOULD you not ignore your online identity, but you soon WILL NOT be able to

• The way in which you respond to legitimate criticism can in fact bolster your reputation (individual or institution)

– Yelp example from Atlanta

Further Resources

• Wild West 2.0: How to protect and restore your online reputation on the untamed social frontier; Fertik & Thompson (available digitally in Virgo)

• The Reputation Society: How online opinions are reshaping the offline world; Masum & Tovey

• How Google Works: http://www.googleguide.com/google_works.html

Further Resources

• http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

• http://www.sirgroane.net/google-page-rank/

• http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Health-online/Part-Two/Section-2.aspx

• http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/February/Pew-Internet-Mobile.aspx

Further Resources

• So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson

• “Silence and Respect”; Reply All episode; https://gimletmedia.com/episode/18-silence-and-respect/