Google is not (only) a search engine
In a recent issue of Wired, Clive Thompson writes about the new radical transparency in business communications in his article “The See-Through CEO.” Thompson points out that we need to start thinking of Google as more than a search engine:
Google is not a search engine. Google is a reputation-management
system. And that’s one of the most powerful reasons so many CEOs have
become more transparent: Online, your rep is quantifiable, findable,
and totally unavoidable….“Online is where reputations are made now,” says Leslie Gaines Ross,
chief reputation strategist — yes, that’s her actual title — with
the PR firm Weber Shandwick. She regularly speaks to companies that
realize a single Google search determines more about how they’re
perceived than a multimillion-dollar ad campaign….”Public relations
used to be about having stuff taken down, and you can’t do that with
the Internet.”
Thompson goes on to note that, since you can no longer escape Internet commentary, the only way to have any influence over it is to fully participate. He writes:
Being transparent, opening up, posting interesting material frequently and
often is the only way to amass positive links to yourself and thus to
directly influence your Googleable reputation. Putting out more
evasion or PR puffery won’t work, because people will either ignore
it or not link to it — or worse, pick the spin apart and enshrine
those criticisms high on your Google list of life.
More: “The See-Through CEO,” Wired 15.04 (March 2007); Clive Thompson’s blog.