The technology continues to evolve to more accurately discern meaning in unstructured data. The complexity and nuances of human language are such that they often confound text analytics, said Andy Beal, who helps clients manage their online reputations. Think of the blogger who texts that his new cell phone is “wicked bad.”

At present, sentiment analysis tools are right 70 to 80 percent of the time, but compared to the cost of surveying 1,000 people by telephone, they’re a lot more efficient, Beal said.

“If a government agency can use sentiment analysis to determine the pulse of people affected by a planned project or spending proposal, it will cut down on human input and the expense of market research,” he said.

Other critics wonder whether Yahoo’s money would be better spent on product improvements. “They’re really trying to package up what’s already there,” says Andy Beal, editor of the Web site Marketing Pilgrim.

Beal doesn’t think the ads are likely to win new customers. “I would argue that consumers have already made a decision: They are aware of what Yahoo has to offer, and they’ve decided there are better alternatives for their time,” Beal says. The company might have been better off taking a cue from Microsoft, Beal says.

Before launching its own ad campaign for Bing, on which Microsoft is reportedly spending $80 million to $100 million, the company poured money into developing the search engine. “Bing is spending $100 million to launch a very compelling alternative to Google. [Yahoo is spending] $100 million to jog somebody’s memory,” he says.

You can listen to the interview here.

According to Andy Beal, co-author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online, personal pages on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all rank highly in Google searches. LinkedIn especially sends a positive message to potential employers, since it’s widely viewed as a highly professional network. Beal says that 78% of recruiters use search engines in their research when they screen new candidates.

You can read all of my advice in “How To Protect Your Online Reputation.”

Anyway, a couple of months later the signed copy of the book was returned to me, along with this letter:

While I’m dissappointed the book was returned, I am somewhat blown away by the integrity of the President’s chief communications guy. Not even accepting something as benign as a $20 book–less it suggest any conflict of interest–makes a pretty bold statement about his integrity, don’t you think?

“One of the most important steps is to do an audit of what people are saying about your business,” says Andy Beal, a reputation management consultant at Marketing Pilgrim in Raleigh, N.C. He suggests doing a monthly Google search to see what shows up in the top 20 results, which might call up a customer’s comment or review on sites such as Yelp, CitySearch, or TripAdvisor. You might be dismayed to see unflattering results high in your Google search. “Google is ambivalent to the tone of the results—it doesn’t care if it’s positive or negative, only if it’s relevant,” Beal says.

If you do see a negative comment, it’s best to respond as soon as you can, within the first 24-48 hours if possible. Use a nondefensive tone and ask for more information, offer to help resolve the problem, or offer your perspective or an apology if warranted. Then, to push those negative results further down in a search, create some new content.

I warned that the risk of relying on your network is that they may start to suffer from participation fatigue:

Socially oriented search engines also need to fight what Internet marketing consultant Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim.com calls “participation fatigue” by users peppered with questions from people they may barely know.

“When we use Google for our searches, we’re tapping into a vast array of computer servers and complex algorithms that offer an infinite willingness to provide answers to our questions,” Beal says. “Search engines that rely on crowdsourcing run the risk that the crowds in question will eventually run out of enthusiasm to constantly help others.”

“Facebook’s valuation dropping like a lead balloon severely hurt the company’s ability to raise the capital it needs,” said Andy Beal, editor of the blog Marketing Pilgrim. “I suspect that this double whammy contributed to Yu’s departure.”

A quick note of thanks to those that voted me to the #23 spot of Most Influential Marketers of 2008–what a great Christmas present!

I love working in internet marketing and to be recognized by your peers is an honor.

The wealth of data is so great — you might learn, for instance, that customers in Milwaukee typically spend three minutes on your site and use Firefox — that many entrepreneurs find it overwhelming. “If you try to look at every piece of data, you’ll go crazy,” says Andy Beal, an online-marketing consultant and co-author of Radically Transparent, a book on the power of new-media tools to build a brand.

To get a sense of how to use analytics to uncover your website’s flaws and make more money, we asked a fast-growing start-up to let three online-marketing experts review its analytics reports. The panel included Beal; Reid Carr, CEO of Red Door Interactive, an online-marketing firm based in San Diego; and Avinash Kaushik, from Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) analytics division.

They did a pretty in-depth interview with me about how the government is using social media to manage its online reputation–and become radically transparent. Here’s an extract:

FCW: What is the risk for government if people say negative things about it on the Internet?
Beal: There is risk in loss of confidence. The U.S. government has to monitor and manage its reputation for its agencies just the same way as a large Fortune 500 company has to manage the reputation of its different products and brands. The negative impact on the government isn’t that its stock price will go down. At the end of the day, every little negative item out there will reflect on the U.S. government as a whole. In general, we tend not to see the individual departments. People don’t blame the departments — they say it’s the U.S. government.

However, the individual agencies really do need to take responsibility for what’s being said and to manage their online reputation. The U.S. government’s reputation will be chipped away piece by piece with small attacks on individual agencies. Agencies need to respond to these individual attacks. It can feel like a game of whack-a-mole. Some agencies, no matter what they do, are still going to be criticized, but they still need to respond.

Overall, they may not necessarily see the benefits themselves. But when you look at the sum of the whole, by responding to criticism, engaging stakeholders, you’re helping the overall U.S. government with its reputation. It all contributes to the overall online sentiment toward the government.

That made my day!

A couple of weeks back, the New York Post took a look at online reputation management and how it can help individuals that have a less than stellar Google reputation.

I had the chance to share some thoughts with Brian Moore. Some of my quotes include:

“You can’t make a negative Web page disappear off the Web unless you own it yourself,” says Andy Beal, a reputation management consultant and co-author of the new book “Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online.” “The best you can hope for is to push it down in the Google results.”

“Some things will never get pushed down – if you have an SEC report or a criminal record or a report on rippedoff.com,” says Beal.

“We live in a radically transparent world,” says Beal. “At the end of the day, your best bet is to maintain a really good character.”

You can read the full story here.

Here are two recent news articles that I was asked to be a part of:

1. Do Reputation Management Services Work? – BusinessWeek
2. Job recruiters checking up on prospects – The Charlotte Observer

After testing so many different online monitoring tools, I decided the only way I could find the perfect reputation tracking software would be to build it myself. Hence the launch of Trackur.com.

You can sign-up for a free 14-day trial or watch the demo video below.