Google Sidewiki – What It Means for Your Business

What Google Sidewiki is and isn’t, and how it could affect your business

Sidewiki is, first of all, meant to be a means to help people better communicate their knowledge and experiences with a website, product or subject with other users. There are multiple ways to do that on the web already, many of them real time (such as FriendFeed and Twitter). The main difference here is that the opinion appears in a sidebar that expands from the side of your webpages — complete with a very clickable bubble button that calls out to be opened and read. It isn’t actually part of your website, it is part of Google Toolbar, but for some, that is really just splitting hairs.

Sidewiki isn’t, as far as we know, some grand scheme of Google’s to whittle away at your sense of security and your marketing person’s sanity. However, it does present some very real problems in the realm of public relations. Again, not any new problems, but the proximity of the comments to your business’ website does somehow amplify the issues of information control and reputation management that businesses already have with the modern web. Think of it like a group of people standing outside of your business location(s) holding big signs that say things like “This guy ripped me off!” or “Their products are defective… try these ones instead — they’re better and half the price!” and then engaging your potential customers in further conversation on the subjects. Then they all get on their cell phone's — the ones with GPS locators — and send messages to everyone they know telling them to not come to this location either, and those friends proceed to tell all of their friends, and so on, and so forth.

With Sidewiki’s instant sharing options to Twitter, IM, Facebook and Email, this scenario could be a very real one that could potentially affect your reputation enough that it impacts who bothers with your website or walks through the door of your local business. One of the primary uses of the internet today is to look up reviews on local businesses and products before even picking up the phone or heading out the door.

Before you start thinking about that pressure in your chest, remind yourself that this is just a worst-case scenario. Yes, the potential for competition trashing you is there, yes there will be droves of idiot spammers that have nothing better to do than say something pointlessly negative. But Google has spent some time and a good deal of engineering smarts on a new algorithm that attempts to weed out the useless and pointless and only allow “quality comments” to rise to the top. This algorithm incorporates elements like language sophistication to sweep the “You suck!”s under the carpet, and a comment flagging system. It also takes into account the commenter’s reputation within Sidewiki, as well as how long they have been commenting with the service. If the user has a Google Profile, the length of time they have had the profile and their “Profile Rank” also come into play. Another factor, which also includes a layer of accountability, is that you must be logged in to Google services to be able to use Sidewiki — and your posts are directly attached to your Google Profile, as well.

You can take heart in that there have been multiple services out there that have already tried to do what Sidewiki is doing, and they didn’t get any real traction. However, people are much more interested in easily finding and sharing information online now than ever before, and Sidewiki offers them a decent platform to do this. The mass engagement of the Google Toolbar and general clout of Google itself may help solidify the Sidewiki project into a long-term reality. It should be noted that there are other players in the current space as well, like Diigo, DotSpots, Fleck and Trailfire. The likelihood is, this sort of direct website annotation is probably not going to go away.

What you can do to mitigate the situation

Well, if it isn’t going to go away — what do you do? Just roll over and take it? The short answer here, is “No”. As previously mentioned, Sidewiki is meant to be a useful tool — so use it!

• Be a part of the conversation - Get out there and start commenting on other sites (and your own) — be intelligent and engaging in your observations.
• Get a Google Profile - The pages may be ugly, but, as noted above, they are becoming more and more useful.
• Answer negative commentary and questions on your site as if your business reputation hung in the balance - This is something you should probably be doing anyway…
• Maintain a strong business and customer service ethic – The more active you are in maintaining a positive reputation for your company, the more likely you will be to come out a winner with Sidewiki.
• Use the Owner Comment option provided to you – Google provides you with the option to claim the top comment spot on your pages for yourself. Just verify your ownership of the site with Google Webmaster Central, log in to Sidewiki on your own pages and add your comment. Don’t forget to tick the checkbox to send your comment to the top of the list. Your other comments will be treated like any other user by Google’s Sidewiki algorithm, so put your focus on the first four points, above.

If you adopt Sidewiki as a part of your overall business strategy, you may find it to be a useful, even fruitful addition. It may actually help to generate customers and complete sales. This will mean added work for your marketing team — or for you alone — but, outraged buzz or not, it is not so different from what your online approach to business should be anyway. There is every chance that Sidewiki will flop and fall on its face, but we aren't holding our breath on that. The founders of Google apparently wanted to do this before they even thought of developing a search engine, so they are probably going to stick with it a while. In any case, the concept keeps appearing and it will only make you sharper and more prepared to handle the various snakes and pitfalls of any iteration of web annotation if you jump in now. The way Twitter is evolving, for example, isn’t so different in its use or pitfalls — and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon.

What do you think of Sidewiki? Does it excite/scare/anger you? Will you use it? Let us know in the comments!