Maybe the rebel in you says “Who cares what Google has on me?” Maybe you really don’t care, but if that’s the case, let us consider reasons why you really should care. Maybe you just gave up trying to have a “clean” representation on Google. Too many people view it as a futile effort and throw in the towel, give up, and just live with it.
It may shock you how many websites collect information about you, and what they are presenting to anybody looking. What Google is telling people about you matters more than ever before. Just one ugly social media rant on a bad day – or worse, one politically incorrect slip on your part may cost you, big. Add in some faulty information or somebody with the same or similar name, and it can be a big problem – but avoidable.
It recently struck me, as I decided to re-publish this old blog after taking it down five years ago. I want my own words to be there when they Google Mark Murnahan.
Even if you don’t care, somebody probably does care what the Internet says about you. It isn’t just about looking good among friends. It can cost you a future job – or even a current job. It could keep you (or your kid) from getting that college acceptance letter (true story). It could mean you don’t get a second date. It could even hurt somebody near you. As a father, you can bet I’m Googling the kids that my kids hang out with, along with their parents.
The reasons to be aware and manage what’s out there are numerous. An estimated seventy-five percent of companies will Google your name to make hiring decisions. I suspect that’s a low estimate. What if you are not looking for a job? Maybe the threat doesn’t feel as grave, but bosses eventually retire, quit, or move on. What if the new boss wants to know you a little better?
What will they find?
What about a date? It may seem all magical at first, but when they stop responding to your messages, it may be time to see what they found online, and freshen it up a bit.
There are many reasons to consider what’s out there in the wild, with your name on it. Information doesn’t even have to be true to cause damage. It’s really worth the minutes it takes to find out, and begin to address it.
Being proactive and building positive information in search results is the best answer. That makes it much harder for the ugly stuff to build up later. If it’s already a bit messy, it is time to give Google something positive to show people.
I want to share a tool I found useful, and unlike others I have seen. Note that this is unsolicited. I am not paid to write this. If I seem excited about it, that’s because I found it to be a very useful and informative site. I am highly impressed.
BrandYourself offers a free tool to help you discover things that may be holding you back or harming your good name, online. It will find things you may not realize are out there in the wild, including a thorough look at search and social media sites. The results may surprise you.
A free BrandYourself profile will give you another page that will climb the search rankings and help knock down another of the things you don’t want in the top listings. It will also help the good information that you list on your profile, such as your LinkedIn, Twitter, your blog, or other pages, to rank better and hold their position. This makes it a great tool, both proactively and reactively, to improve your online reputation.
The tools of BrandYourself are robust, well-researched, and include useful tips to help you do it yourself. You can also set up notifications to keep an eye on your progress. They have service upgrades available, and even a Concierge Service in case you need their professional help.
Rather than explain it all to you, here’s their “Shark Tank” pitch from 2015. Notice that they turned down millions of dollars from the Sharks, but went on to do far better elsewhere. Since that time, they have grown the tools on an impressive scale. The social media tools are very robust, and the search value is excellent.
Here is an example of a BrandYourself profile: Mark Murnahan
Google's Panda: Watching from Above
Your search engine ranking efforts may be hurting your business a lot more than you think! Whether you are the person handling your search engine destiny, or you have hired a search engine optimizer to handle it, this is information you should know. I’ll start with some simple facts.
Google makes frequent changes to their algorithm (roughly 500 per year). Yes, algorithm … the mathematical methods used to determine which websites will rank higher or lower in searches. On occasion, the changes are quite significant, such as the “Panda” series of updates (most recently Panda 2.5). We should expect changes, and it is a very good thing.
Google has a lot at stake in continuing to deliver the most relevant results when we go searching. From a search user’s standpoint, it is excellent, because it helps us find what we are looking for, easier and faster than ever. From a business standpoint, it is a huge cause for concern to many people, and often rightfully so.
Should you worry about Google’s changes? Perhaps yes, and perhaps no. Let’s see if I can answer that question. I’ll address some changes in layman’s terms, including a blast from the past that seems to be making a resurgence, which is “Google Bowling”, and it is not to be overlooked. In fact, I’ll explain how the methods of link building which many SEO sell to their customers is the same tactic other companies use to negatively affect competing websites. Please don’t click away if some of this seems too basic, or too advanced. There is value here, and I’ll make it easy to understand.
In Google’s Own Words:
“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”
Source: The Official Google Blog
I often challenge search engine optimization providers for their abuse of people’s fears by telling them SEO requires constant technology changes to keep up. What the abused SEO-buying public hesitates to understand is that SEO is not a function of technology. It is generally very untrue that search engine changes will adversely affect rankings based on technology issues. I have extensive proof of this in competitive markets where I have ranked websites at the top of searches, but made absolutely no changes. Some have not been touched in a decade, but still rank in the top one to three positions for competitive searches. Of course, that only happens if you are doing things above board, and not trying to cheat your way to the top … or paying somebody else to do it.
The problem that is hitting many websites hard with the new Google changes is that they have, either knowingly or unknowingly, used practices which Google has recently cracked down on harder than ever before.
What Google Changed in Panda Update … In Simple Terms
Some of the most recent Google algorithm changes are making a broad impact across the Internet. Big change always sends the cockroaches of the search engine optimization industry scurrying for a new patch of darkness. This time, the changes are in a series of updates called “Panda”, with the latest to date being called “Panda 2.5”. The focus of the updates is to wipe out some of the most prevalent and slimy tactics companies use to try and trick their way to top search engine rankings. I’ll share some reasons this could affect your online business future. Panda Update is Good News ... Unless You're the Bamboo!
Unique Content Matters: Copycats Don’t Have Nine Lives!
One hard-hit area is companies taking content from other websites and re-purposing it on their own website. This can be as simple as a retailer re-using a manufacturer’s description, or a lazy content producer stealing somebody else’s work. An extremely hard hit area is auto-blogging, which automatically scrapes content from other websites to increase blog content. The more “innocent” instance uses automated means to replicate product descriptions from a manufacturer or supplier database. It happens a lot, and has been widely accepted for years, but many companies are finally seeing the downside. If you are unsure whether this is being done with your website, you may soon find out … the hard way.
What’s worse, is that a lot of people are paying search engine optimizers who use links from this kind of reduced-quality website to link to theirs. These dirty SEO tell the client that more links are a good thing, so they create thousands of them, but they don’t tell the client the rest of the story. It is extremely common, and very destructive, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
A huge number of websites are hit by Google’s more hard-line approach with Panda updates. It is often because somebody opted for the easy way, instead of the right way. This is the way of the dark side of the SEO industry, but somebody keeps feeding the SEO monster, and it’s not me.
I cannot call anybody a victim if this hits them in the wallet, because there are no victims. There are only “willingly confused“. Due diligence and common sense often go out the window when it comes to marketing, and especially as it applies to the Internet. People really want to believe that “easy success” actually exists.
Many people previously decided that the easy way is the better way, but its not true, and Google is proving it. It takes a lot of work to create truly excellent unique content that will perform well in searches. A lot of companies fell for the notion of trying to save money by using cheap SEO tactics and taking shortcuts, but Google is fighting back. Now people are finding out that the cost of shortcuts is a whole lot more than doing it right in the first place. If you who want to know “How much does SEO cost”, I suggest searching Google for it … but be sure to look for this article while you are there: “How Much Does SEO Cost?” is The Wrong Question. It won’t be hard to find … I wrote it.
Links Are Not Created Equal!
A tactic that Google is aggressively punishing is buying or trading links from other websites to make your website falsely appear more credible and “important”. This has always been a sore spot for Google, but more today than ever, as the Internet’s growth accelerates. Google wants to judge the Internet by what people like and find useful, and not things which have been falsely inflated by “content farms” and low-quality link gathering. It is why I have always spoken out against such tactics. An example is my article titled “Reciprocal Link Exchanges Don’t Work!“. I don’t think I can be a lot more clear than that.
Acquiring links is something that most search engine optimizers will tell you is very important. What too many of them don’t explain is that doing it the wrong way will, with near certainty, cause more harm than good. Link building strategies are not created equal, and a huge number of SEO are doing it totally wrong! It is another in a long list of lies SEO tell.
Google knows who links to your website, and who links to the websites that link to your website. There are no secrets here … if there is a link in a public place on the Internet, it is Google’s intent and responsibility to know about it. From all of those links, Google creates and evaluates the website’s overall link portfolio. It is a primary factor in determining what will be listed in search results, and where it will appear on the list. If the links in a website’s overall portfolio of links are not relevant, or are not what Google can logically (algorithmically) expect as a natural conclusion, the website will suffer.
Google Bowling and Bad SEO
I touched on some of the things Google does not like, but now, let’s imagine reverse engineering this. What if somebody else tried to make it look like you used these tactics? One way that seems possible is “Google Bowling”. That is the practice of buying or otherwise acquiring low-quality links to a competitor’s website in hopes of affecting a penalty against them from Google.
Wait! It seems crazy if there is actually a value in this kind of links that they could be used for harm, right? Well, there is not a value in them, and Google Bowling is a real thing … just google it. Directing a high volume of those low-quality links that so many SEO are selling is actually often used against competitors. It is an old trick, but it appears to be making a resurgence since Google’s Panda updates.
That is a dirty tactic, but does it work? Many indications show that it can and does work. Before you worry, here’s the good news: It will generally only have an affect against websites with a weak link profile. The bad news is that if you don’t have a mature and high-quality link profile, it may include you.
This came to mind recently, as I discovered nearly 300,000 new links pointing to my blog, here at “SEO and Social Media Marketing Blog”. They all sprung up in only a few days, which is a bad signal to Google of somebody buying links. Some people would surely say “Wow, that’s great! Hundreds of thousands of free links!” To say the least, I was not so delighted. Somebody is trying to Google Bowl my blog. I discovered it because of excessive Google Alerts, and also signals in my Google Webmaster Tools. See the example screenshot below.
Note: A few days after I took this screenshot and wrote this article, the new link creation peaked at over 2.6 million new incoming links.
Screenshot of My Google Webmaster Tools Links Report
The good news is that I already had a baseline of over 150,000 incoming links. Some are good, while some are not so good, but it is a good balance. It is a mature link profile with a significant volume of high-quality links in the mix. If not for that, I would be worried, and with good reason.
With a good existing link profile, the worst scenario would be to file a reconsideration request with Google and explain the issue. With a link profile built on weak tactics, the challenge to recover becomes much more tedious, and emphasizes the value of being proactive.
Summary of Google’s Panda Update
When you have thousands … millions … billions, and even squillions of companies competing for the same space, it is pretty easy to see how trickery and fraud could flourish. It is easy for Google (and other search engines) to see this, too. They have billions of dollars at stake, and some of the brightest minds working to thwart that kind of trickery and fraud.
It should be no surprise why, as high search engine rankings became more challenging, the masses have scurried to try and figure out social media. Social media is an important signal which Google uses to measure a website’s value. In actuality, Google is the biggest example of social media there is. The links to and from websites are the most profound social measurement across all social media. It reflects what the people like and do not like. When that is faked, Google has a lot of ways to measure it.
As long as you are not sending false signals by trying to cheat search engines, you have little to worry about when they make changes. The sad fact is that many people are sending false signals, and they don’t even know it. They relied on search engine optimizers who offered a good pitch and a low price. The outcome is often far more costly than doing it right in the first place. Doing it right does not cost money, it pays money. Doing it cheap and haphazard is where the big cost comes in.
Search engine ranking holds many businesses’ success or failure in the balance. Where your website is ranked in search results, whether you accept this or not, can make a huge impact in your business. Most companies don’t fully recognize the degree of impact, because they have never been ranked very well. It is true … most … and that is because the space at the top of the list is very limited.
P.S. If you are the thumb-sucker behind trying to Google Bowl my blog, know this: People are sick of your kind of useless tactics. They already wasted their money trying it your way, and they are pissed. That’s why I often write about your type of SEO, and warn people. I suspect you are pouting like a wet toddler who never got enough love, but you won’t bump me from your favorite spot. Count on it!
One great benefit of social media is the ability to communicate with others in the format and space they want to communicate. Some people will choose to discuss a topic on Facebook, while others choose LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Amplify, or a squillion others. Many people will pick a handful of networks to focus their attention, based on their interests or their intended audience, and monitor them vigilantly. Google+ is climbing the ranks of preferred networks very quickly!
Blog readers and writers take note: You probably don’t notice this challenge much from a reader standpoint, but if you are a blogger who is paying attention to where your content is being discussed, you probably see this all the time. Do you ever notice that there are comments in about 37 different contexts spread across a handful of networks, all related to a single blog post?
As a blog article spreads, it is threaded into a lot of places with a lot of different conversations. Although they usually include a link back to the original article, very few of those outside conversations really do a good job of connecting the audience to the central conversation, or vice versa. After all, those comments somewhere else are seldom seen by the people reading the article, so they don’t get the benefit of those other peoples’ thoughts and opinions … and it squelches opportunities for them to network together with those other like-minded people. Sometimes that is a real shame.
It is great when your article is being shared and discussed. It would be foolish to discourage it, but when the conversation … the very genesis of the topic … begins with a blog article, it can also have some downsides. The message can become very muddled, and the conversations often stray far from the original topic. I have seen it a squillion times that the conversations do not even touch on the topic of the original blog article beyond the headline or description.
Again, this can be great in some ways. The evolution of a topic can be fascinating as it is morphed through enough various groups’ brain filters. However, even in the best scenario that it does not lose all of the author’s well-crafted thought provoking intent, this can still lead to a pretty messy challenge for the originator to keep up with the many conversations. When it comes to blogs, either reading them or writing them, those opinions count. Sometimes the best part of a blog article is in the comments that build upon the topic.
Native Blog Comments vs. Off-Blog Comments
When conversations are broken apart, each of the individual discussions will often lose a lot of the best and most well thought out responses from the smartest and most worthwhile participants. Also, as I already mentioned, it significantly discounts many opportunities for others with like minds to network together.
In the end, let’s face it … more people are going to see the original article in its native environment than they will on any given reader’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+ profile. With that in mind, if you really have something to say, you will do the author, yourself, and other readers a much greater service by including your comments on that blog article. Best of all, your comment is usually just as convenient, and can often even be shared in duplicate, with a single click, to your other social networks if you should choose. That way, others can see what you thought of the topic even before they go and read the article.
Some social networks have helped to make accommodations for this challenge, but others still have some work to do. I am hopeful that this will be a part of future Google+ improvements.
An example of a huge leap forward toward connecting blogs with outside conversations was in Facebook comments, which allow for comments to be shared both on the originating blog and on Facebook simultaneously. This is one way I think that Facebook is still whipping Google+ in a huge way, although I expect that to change.
Similarly, Disqus does a fantastic job of connecting conversations across networks, although it could still be better at pulling in off-blog comments with higher accuracy. BackType used to fit this need by bringing in conversations from all over the place, but they kind of wrecked that system in favor of other money-making hopes.
In any case, I think that making a greater connection with those off-blog comments is a responsibility of the blog owner, and should always be taken seriously. There are a lot of ways to monitor those conversations, and none of them are a perfect magic bullet. It takes a lot of attention, but should not be overlooked.
Google+ vs. Blog Comments
Google+ is an excellent platform. I really like it for many reasons, and not the least of which is the high level of interactivity that I have encountered there. It seems that people are really enjoying a lot of conversation on Google+.
Of course, some of that active engagement may be because it is still a bit of a novelty. It could also be that, although it is a much different type of platform, people are seeing it as a chance for a “do-over” by handling it differently than they handled their Twitter or Facebook. Whatever the case, it seems to me that people are using it in great ways, and it is far less spam-riddled and spam-prone than many other networks.
Sadly, Google+ also poses a greater challenge for monitoring and participating in the outside conversations about your topics. I hope it will change, but in the meantime, I think it is worth being aware and attentive to as many as possible.
What Makes Sense to You?
It is an extreme example, but do you ever see a comment on an outside network about a blog article and it shows without a doubt that the person responding did not even give a passing glance at the original context, beyond the headline? It could frustrate the originating author, but for me, I mostly just chock it up to another brainiac trying to sound smart without the will to actually be smart. You know, like reading beyond the headline before replying. Yes, this is an extreme example, but here is something I find to be common: comments directly on a blog will nearly always be more on-topic and more beneficial to the community.
The greatest variable across all of this wonderful technology is you. Nobody is going to tell you how to use a blog, either as a commenter or an author. The best I can hope for is to give you some encouragement … you know, a nudge. Where you take it from there is up to you. In my opinion, as well as my actual usage, I find it beneficial that if I am making a comment about a blog article, I duplicate it with a simple copy and paste from the original article to whatever network I am sharing it on. That is, if that option is not already a part of the blog itself, which it often is.
What do you have to say about this? Go ahead … put it on some other network where nobody but a few of your friends will see it. Otherwise, feel free to join in and stop being so damn elusive. What are you afraid of? These people don’t bite!
P.S. Biters please refrain from biting other respondents … just this once. 😉
Related Articles: You didn’t think this was my first go at an article about blogging, did you? I think these will give you some really good food for thought!
Google acquires many companies, but do you ever notice which ones, and do you ever speculate on why Google wants these start-up companies? I think it makes for some great water cooler gossip, but I also think it begins to form a picture of where our Internet is, and where it is moving.
Some of the recent Google acquisitions have been Fridge, which has a focus on security in social sharing, and PittPatt (Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition), a facial recognition developer. With only minimal creativity, one can imagine how these could each be useful to Google. I am confident that we will see influence from these technologies as Google continues to enhance the Google+ platform and other Google products.
I think perhaps one of the most telling of Google’s recent acquisitions is when they picked up PostRank in June. I wrote about PostRank back in 2010 in an article titled “Social Media Measurement Tools: What Do They Know About You?” Something I stated in that article was as follows: “PostRank pulls data from many sources, which makes it far less fallible than others which only measure single points of data.” It seems that Google noticed the value in this as well.
The image below shows an example of a PostRank score for a given article and indicates what PostRank knows about it. PostRank data can still be flawed, due to network restrictions and the sheer volume of data, but it does a good job.
Example of PostRank Measurement
We obviously know that Google has been very keen on social media for a long time. In fact, I have often said that Google is the ultimate king of social media. I do not mean because of their efforts with relative non-starters like Google Wave and Google Buzz, or the social feed in Google search results.
When I say that Google is the king of social media, I mean that because they have always made extraordinary strides toward measuring and delivering the information that is deemed important by social interaction. That social interaction has historically been in the form of websites linking to other websites. Google not only measures links from website to website, but they qualify it with the more popular websites providing amplification to the signal. This principle is not changing, but the methods and complexities of measurement are changing. In my estimation, Google is not missing a beat, and the acquisition of PostRank further adds to their reach.
People have tried to argue that Google’s measurement of links from one website to another is not social media, but let’s have a look at “social”. Social means, literally, “Of or relating to society or its organization” and it doesn’t just mean the microcosmic view of making buddies or socializing in the “let’s grab a beer” sense. By measuring website links, Google has used a social response from others to determine what people want, and what they are looking for.
So, let’s look at how the modern use of social media changed things. Google’s historical measurement of links is still just as social-based as what we see in modern social networks. The overall factors of separating the popular from the unpopular are similar. The difference today is that the simplicity of sharing those links is much easier for the non-technical “John and Mary Lunchbucket” type who don’t know anything about websites or HTML. Accordingly, it is much faster, and the amount of information to sort through is huge. There are a lot of factors to assimilate, and far more data points than ever before. Google is extremely efficient at this, but now Google has even more help gathering that data.
Since you may wonder how Google’s acquisition of PostRank really makes sense, or how it can help Google, here is a brief statement about PostRank in their own words:
What is PostRank?
The social web connects people where they share, critique and interact with content and each other. PostRank is the largest aggregator of social engagement data in the industry.
Our platform tracks where and how users engage, and what they pay attention to — in real-time. PostRank social engagement data measures actual user activity, the most accurate indicator of the relevance and influence of a site, story, or author.
PostRank provides useful data for publishers, and now that data will be useful to Google as well. I have heard a lot of people confused about how Google views the usage of modern social networks. I think it is absurd that a person could actually think they are not making efficient use of this information. For anybody who doubts the degree to which Google gives attention to modern social signals, the acquisition of PostRank should give a further indication that they are serious.
PostRank Engagement Activity Report
What Google Says About PostRank
According to an article on TechCrunch, Google made the statement about their acquisition of PostRank as follows:
“We’re always looking for new ways to measure and analyze data, and as social analytics become increasingly important for online businesses, we’re excited to work with the PostRank team to make this data more actionable and accountable. They have developed an innovative approach to measuring web engagement, and we think they can help us improve our products for our users and advertisers.”
If you are curious about how it works, or what PostRank knows about your presence on the web, I would encourage you to take a closer look and get familiar with PostRank.
This further emphasizes what I have always claimed, which is that SEO and social media marketing are entirely intertwined, and always will be. Through it all, I think it is important to note that Google wants to index your website, and they even go to great lengths to help you help yourself.
Klout is a social measurement tool that places a numeric value on a person’s influence within their social media circles. The service currently pulls data from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare for their influence calculations, but plans to add Google+, YouTube, Facebook Pages, and others for a total of 20 networks by the end of 2011.
On the surface, it may sound positively impersonal, and even a bit absurd to make judgments based on a number, but is it really? We’ve been doing it for many years with credit scores. I don’t think it is a good idea to become obsessed about statistics such as these, but I do believe it is valuable to be aware.
Klout seems to have really honed in on a couple of interesting psychological and business needs of social media. I will explain what I mean, and how it could have a real-world impact for a lot of people, whether they like it or not.
I wrote about Klout back in 2010 in an article on the topic of social media measurement tools and what they know about you. It raised a question of what this type of service may know, and what level of accuracy or inaccuracy they may reflect. This type of data collection across multiple networks is subject to errors. Reliability is simply not guaranteed, but it is getting better.
Klout Score and Perceived Personal Worth
Klout hits on a very personal psychological need for a lot of people, which is the need to feel valuable. I think we can largely agree that we all want to feel like we make an impact. We want to know that we are being heard.
This is not to say that we are all Narcissistic for using social media, but only that it would not be so fun to communicate if nobody listened to us or acknowledged us. If that was the way we wanted it, we would just keep all of our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media thoughts to ourselves. We could keep them on our own computers and we wouldn’t need this Internet to share them.
It's OK to Be Proud Sometimes
The desire to share and collaborate clearly creates a strong psychological drive for many people. I do not think it is at all strange for somebody to feel a sense of greater personal satisfaction when their thoughts or ideas receive Facebook shares and comments, or Twitter replies and retweets. It is no more Narcissistic or bizarre than how it feels to receive applause for any job done well. In some cases, it can actually be quite humbling, like when the whole restaurant starts singing “Happy Birthday” and you just want to sink deep down into your seat as you blush. At the same time, it feels kind of alluring and it makes you smile.
When it comes to social media, it is easy to be just a bit allured by the objective measurements. I’ll be the first to raise my hand. When I see a squillion people sharing my work, I love it. It makes me happy, like sucking free grape soda through a garden hose, while eating from kiddie pool piled high with bacon. It feels very satisfying, and validating.
So, I am sure you can imagine how this psychological desire applies to Klout. Klout measures a person’s influence of others. People want to know their Klout Score, and it is pretty hard to fault them for that. This makes it easy to understand why it has had such a strong level of attention, and how it holds huge potential for continued growth.
The Business End of Klout
Far beyond the typical consumer desire to be measured as accepted, popular, or influential, there is a strong business side of Klout that is undeniable.
Klout Affects Hiring DecisionsThousands of companies are using Klout’s information in hiring decisions, purchasing decisions, and in their communications strategies. Whether you like it or you don’t, and whether it is right or wrong, numbers are a front-line component in our business world. Scoring such as offered by Klout is being relied upon more all the time as Internet static continues to flood into our business communications.
There is magic in numbers! I am a marketing guy, so I rely on a lot of different sets of numbers. Many of the numbers that are conventionally viewed as important don’t mean a damn thing to me. Inaccurate or meaningless data would be an easy way for a guy in my line of work to waste a lot of time, and burn through huge amounts of money. That means I need the good stuff. I want the least fallible information I can get my hands on, and that is where my attention is focused.
Klout’s data is largely based on activities across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but there is another component that allows a sort of industry-specific peer review. Yes, Klout also includes industry-specific information about an individual’s influence. In this peer review model, others may enhance a person’s Klout by clicking to give them “+K” for a given segment, and it is like a vote. The “K” is wisely limited so that a user only has five “K” to give out per day. So, if I wanted to give you a “K” because you influenced me in some way, I cannot go wild and spike your Klout score. If I really liked you, I could come back each day and give you “K”, but that would not provide unreliable data, because it would reliably reflect your high level of influence upon me.
Klout also attempts to define a style in which a person influences others. These styles provide an interesting overall view of how the individual uses their social media. There are sixteen different styles, and they are described as follows:
Klout Style Definitions
Curator: You highlight the most interesting people and find the best content on the web and share it to a wide audience. You are a critical information source to your network. You have an amazing ability to filter massive amounts of content to surface the nuggets that your audience truly care about. Your hard work is very much appreciated.
Broadcaster: You broadcast great content that spreads like wildfire. You are an essential information source in your industry. You have a large and diverse audience that values your content.
Taste Maker: You know what you like and your audience likes it too. You know what’s trending, but you do more than just follow the crowd. You have your own opinion that earns respect from your network.
Celebrity: You can’t get any more influential than this. People hang on your every word, and share your content like no other. You’re probably famous in real life and your fans simply can’t get enough.
Syndicator: You keep tabs on what’s trending and who’s important to watch. You share the best of this with your followers and save them from having to find what’s hot on their own. You probably focus on a specific topic or cater to a defined audience.
Feeder: Your audience relies on you for a steady flow of information about your industry or topic. Your audience is hooked on your updates and secretly can’t live without them.
Thought Leader: You are a thought leader in your industry. Your followers rely on you, not only to share the relevant news, but to give your opinion on the issues. People look to you to help them understand the day’s developments. You understand what’s important and what your audience values that.
Pundit: You don’t just share news, you create the news. As a pundit, your opinions are wide-spread and highly trusted. You’re regularly recognized as a leader in your industry. When you speak, people listen.
Dabbler: You might just be starting out with the social web or maybe you’re not that into it. If you want to grow your influence, try engaging with your audience and sharing more content.
Conversationalist: You love to connect and always have the inside scoop. Good conversation is not just a skill, it’s an art. You might not know it, but when you are witty, your followers hang on every word.
Socializer: You are the hub of social scenes and people count on you to find out what’s happening. You are quick to connect people and readily share your social savvy. Your followers appreciate your network and generosity.
Networker: You know how to connect to the right people and share what’s important to your audience. You generously share your network to help your followers. You have a high level of engagement and an influential audience.
Observer: You don’t share very much, but you follow the social web more than you let on. You may just enjoy observing more than sharing or you’re checking this stuff out before jumping in full-force.
Explorer: You actively engage in the social web, constantly trying out new ways to interact and network. You’re exploring the ecosystem and making it work for you. Your level of activity and engagement shows that you “get it”, we predict you’ll be moving up.
Activist: You’ve got an idea or cause you want to share with the world and you’ve found the perfect medium for it. Your audience counts on you to champion your cause.
Specialist: You may not be a celebrity, but within your area of expertise your opinion is second to none. Your content is likely focused around a specific topic or industry with a focused, highly-engaged audience.
These are not handed out at random, but rather based on the outgoing and incoming data about each given profile. Although, for some really crazy but totally flattering reason, Klout measures me as a “Celebrity”. Of course, to that I’d say “Heck yeah … roll out the red carpet and pop the champagne. There’s gonna be a party!” Is That Paparazzi I Hear Approaching, or Just More Naked Coeds Running to Greet Me?
Is Klout Accurate?
Do I think that Klout is entirely accurate? Absolutely not, but I do believe they are doing a good job. One reason is the sheer volume of their data. They are currently compiling data about more than 75 million users, and expect to include information from 20 different networks by the end of 2011. The numbers become more accurate in higher volume, but that is not enough. What about how that data is processed? This is where Klout really stands out, and pulls away from the crowd.
Klout organizes data from more sources and uses more factors than other companies trying to compile and present a numeric score. The broad diversity of data acquisition makes it much harder to cheat a Klout score, and thus, more reliable than other online influence measurement tools. If you have not already done so, it is worth taking a look at how Klout compiles scores. There is clearly a far more in-depth process than what is described, but it will give you a good overview.
Like anything else, Klout can be manipulated for an increased score, but not without a high degree of talent, and significant efforts.
Historical data is critically important in many business processes, but let’s not overlook the value of predictive data. With the right data at hand, I can imagine predictive data becoming a part of the Klout algorithm in the future, as people seek those who are on the rise. Imagine the business value of finding those with high potential who are just not on the RADAR yet.
Is Klout Good or Evil?
Is Klout good or evil? This is a question that it seems a lot of people struggle with about any company which acquires a lot of data. I think it is good, and it helps to meet some challenging needs of businesses and individuals surrounding trust and reputation.
Everybody wants to have influence, but it comes in a package with other factors. Those other factors of trust and reputation are often even harder for companies and individuals to put their finger on. Klout offers some broad insight about an individual and how others view them.
Would I weigh an important hiring or purchasing decision, or a business partnership choice heavily based on Klout? I guess you would have to define heavily for me to answer that, but in many scenarios, I would definitely have to consider it a factor.
Let’s face it, we are each measured every day. Whether it is for the style of our hair, the car we drive, the company we keep, the way we walk, talk, and even how we chew our food. Somebody will always be watching and summing us up. Klout takes it to the social web and makes well-founded estimates about us based on observations.
Perhaps the best answer, for anybody who does not like it, is to consider the other ways in which we are judged based on less reliable factors and guesswork. In the case of Klout, I don’t think it is any more an invasion of privacy or an intrusion than people-watching in a shopping mall.
In the instance of social media, if you are doing the equivalent of standing there picking your nose, somebody will probably notice. In fact, they may even share it on Facebook, and get a higher Klout score for it!
Now if you’d just go and tweet this, Facebook it, give me a Klout “+K” bump for social media, and make a lot of comments about it, maybe I will get that new dreamy offer I’ve been seeking and share some of my Klout with you.
Fine, even if you don’t give me any “K”, I urge you to check it out just to see what Klout knows about you. It may uncover people that you influence and didn’t even know it, or it may introduce you to somebody new to connect with. It’s free, so you don’t have anything to lose, and quite possibly something to gain.
