Real Time Search And Its Implications

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Real Time Search And Its Implications

In late 2009 Google announced that it was integrating real-time data into its searches, featuring news stories, tweets, and other sources of extremely fresh information at the top of searches. In late February, 2010, Google announced a further integration with Facebook, adding data from publicly-shared feeds as well. The implications of this for online reputation management are staggering, and although the full implications are not yet entirely understood, we can look at some main points.

You Must Own Your Identities

Now, more than ever, it is imperative that you own your brand identities on major real-time platforms like Twitter and Facebook. With information coming from those services now available to the larger search audience, the negative consequences of having a competitor or random person controlling a name associated with your brand have increased exponentially. Even if you don’t ultimately leverage those properties to spread the word about your brand, even squatting them for the time being will stop others from using what may be perceived as your voice.

You Must Track the Conversation

If you’ve been shrugging aside Twitter and Facebook as just a small segment of your possible market, and so haven’t been paying attention to what’s being said about you, now is the time for that to change. If your brand becomes part of a trend that Google picks up on for its real-time feed, literally millions of people a day could be seeing information related to your company. You need to be appraised of what is being said about you at all times, so that you can respond or spin as necessary.

You Must Watch Out for Sabotage

Perhaps the biggest implication of real-time search is just how easy it is for your competitors to manipulate. Because of the way the search works, any information related to an active trend will be syndicated on the real-time feed. That means that a competitor could choose to take advantage of a hot topic in order to disparage your brand, spreading rumors among millions of people with virtually no work at all. By using Google Trends a competitor could find a hot topic, and then start tweeting using that key phrase, associating it with your brand name in a pejorative way. By tracking activity related to your brand, you can be aware of these slights as they occur, and can respond or take action as needed.

You Must Watch Your Employee Buzz

The real-time integration of Facebook updates is perhaps one of the most frightening aspects of this for larger brands. It means that the possibility of an employee damaging the brand inadvertently has suddenly become much greater. Any employee who’s had a bad day at work, or a bad interaction with a boss, could easily post a status update painting the brand name in a negative light, which will then be syndicated into real-time search and made available to millions of people. Carefully monitoring employee use of social media platforms is the first line of defense in managing any negative updates before they become problems.

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