The new tool is actually a Firefox browser plug-in called Blogger Web Comments and what it does is allow you to monitor what people are saying about a page you are on.

You see, when someone blogs about a topic, they usually link to the sources of their information or commentary. Google can then monitor those links (especially if they are Blogger links because Google owns Blogger) and is able to quickly show you who has referenced that page in their blog.

So how does this work?

It's quite simple actually. Once you install the plug-in and restart Firefox it automatically queries Blogger for those posts which link to the page you are on. Then the icon tells you if there are blog links pointing to the page.

Take the extensions own page. Even though the extension is new I can see that there are at least 6 people who have posted about it on a Blogger blog. And when I click the 'more' link in the window that shows me the blogs, I actually get a list of all the blogs linking to the page via Google's blog search. I can see that there are already 40 blogs linking to the extensions page.

So how do you use this to monitor reputation?

It's quite simple really. Many times, people will link to your home page if they have something good or bad to say about you. So when I check Enquiro's home page I don't see any posts that concern me.

However, when I check another page, such as the one talking about our eye tracking research I see that there are at least 14 sites blogging about this report. All good, mind you, so I'm not concerned.

Now I know what you are thinking: "that's great, but that doesn't tell me how to manage my reputation." And you're right. Up until now all I've shown you is how to use the new extension. So let's look at a practical example.

Remember the camera store I told you about in that last article? Well when I go to Google's blog search via the extension I see that there are 34 different posts, most negative, talking about how this camera store treated its customer so badly.

Of course if I was the business owner I would want to address this immediately.

Also, knowing that Google's blog search only gets a fraction of the blogs out there I'd immediately check the other big engines like Feedster.com and Bloglines.com to see if there is similar publicity.

Lo and behold, Feedster has 1320 listings similar to the ones found in Google (Bloglines only has a couple).

At this point, as the business owner, I know I couldn't possibly comment on all the blogs linking to the negative publicity. Therefore another alternative would need to be considered. Such as contacting the customer who was offended directly to see how to solve the issue and then see if he could then post a positive follow up to his original post.

Another way to combat this would be to issue a positive press release, talking about how good the customer service record is and so on.

As you can see, I was quickly able to identify a problem through the use of a simple Google/Firefox extension.



Rob Sullivan
Head Organic Search Strategist
Enquiro Full Service Search Engine Marketing

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