Online Identity Management

Many sites on the Internet today, provide the opportunity to track a person’s reputation, and even improve it. In order for a company to ensure top results of someone’s name in search engines, they have to build their power first. Thus, they would be able to put their own pages, ranking above other results. We decided to check out one of these sites. Here are the full details.

General Impression

The company’s website looks quite impressive. On the home page you can see a short, nice video animation describing the various services that are offered by the company. To take advantage of these services, one has to be registered, but even without it, the user is given the option to check the status of his reputation by using a simple, Google-powered search box on the site. Another way of finding users is through a menu bar on the home page, which shows photos of registered users on the site. Clicking on the picture will take you to the user’s private page, and see the profile he created on the site.

However, when we tried to enter one of the customers using this pictures bar, it was immediately possible to see that much of the profile is empty, and generally, the page was not particularly impressive. Although some of the users’ profiles were complete, many profiles were lacking in data or very short. Advertisements at the bottom of the page, are not related to the subject at all, and create a bad impression on the quality of the site. Apparently, these pages are intended for the non-paying users and therefore their page was not invested in. This could be considered as a marketing flop on the part of the company, since such thin user pages will not convince a potential customer to purchase the company’s paid service.

But if you are trying to control your online reputation without spending a lot of money doing so, this is the site for you because it enables you (usually) to appear on the first page for your name, notwithstanding the fact that it limits you to minimal content.

Services that are Offered

Accessing the “About” page revealed the three objectives that the site managers say they come to provide:
1. To provide accurate user information
2.User can manage and control the extent of the personal information available to the public.
3.User can create a strong impression and a professional appearance on the network.
Indeed, as already seen earlier, we did random checks to the pages that provide the site, and the results were not so impressive.

Packages:

Packages offered by the company include a free package - giving the user a page with information about his professional background, including a picture, and external links the user can give to visitors. By clicking on these links, surfers can obtain more information about you. You can also get limited information regarding who searched your name, and finally - a limited service to follow-up your position in various search engines.
Paid packages add the following functions: Your domain name (i.e. - www.yourname.com), your company’s logo, links and other details of business information that will be added to your description. Also, the user can get a page on the site without advertising, and the option to receive private messages (including spam filtering).
It should be noted that the site managers offer first places on search engines’ result pages, only for those that will purchase one of the packages provided for fee.

Random Testing - Meet the Company Team

At the end of the “About” page are links pointing to the personal pages of the company staff members.  Since one of the needs these pages are supposed to fill is online personal reputation, we thought it would be a good idea to test their own reputation management. When searching for the search term, “Galit Hillel, gave us on the Second and ninth (!) results on Google (first result page for those of you who are not familiar with Google - if there are any ) very not flattering results. Especially for a member in a reputation management company. Being so, wouldn’t you expect him to know how to handle his own reputation? And to know how to remove the results of these unflattering results from such an important search engine like Google. The result raises a question mark regarding the nature of the service that the company can give.

People Search

The website has a function of a directory of costumer names that can be accessed via the site. We conducted a search of a random paying client: “O___e J___e”. But as you can see for yourself in the following screenshot - the second result is not quite as good.

Summary:

Although the site has a very easy-to-use interface, and the pages look nice, we have to remember an old Jewish saying: Do not look on the jar, but in what is in it. Which means: The personal pages do have a very nice look and feel about them, but in this case it is the contents (and not the looks) of the proverbial jar that make all the difference. From a company that pretends to provide an online reputation management product, one would expect LookUpPage.com team members to have a clean Google SERP.

Our tip: us the free account!