Another Reason Search Reputation Management is Important – The “Search Engine Father In Law Syndrome”

Over the past two days, I’ve been working with a very sharp gent by the name of Andres Galdames towards earning a certification from Clicktracks analytics. I will spare the usual soapbox shouting for clicktracks and just tell you that they rock and you’re a fool if you’re using other analytics. During the course of reviewing the material, Andres mentioned that he’s been trying to coin a new term – “The father in law syndrome” – so I told him it sounded like a good post, and that I’d do my best to help out.

The search engine father in law syndrome
Let’s hope Andres’ father in law doesn’t get too upset when he reads this, but how many folks have father in laws, or other older relatives and friends that go to google to type in a web address that you tell them?

In simple form – the search engine father in law syndrome is not knowing the difference between a search engine and the address bar, and USING the SE’s as their address bar.

Think I’m kidding? Check out your stats for branded terms (or terms that include any variation of your web address that come from search engines) – that’s the percentage of your visitors that have SEFILS (if you can’t figure out HOW to do this – is just one more reason you should be calling up the fine folks at clicktracks).

So the conclusion becomes: You know your branded traffic can be incredibly valuable (it’s often your repeat visitors) – how can you POSSIBLY let someone else control the other spots in the top 10 for your branded phrases, and risk losing a small percentage of this valuable traffic due to not understanding SEFILS. Any company should DEFINITELY be proactively optimizing to dominate for these terms.

Just when I had hoped branding was dying, it reincarnates itself in new form. Time to start switching those budgets from billboards to branding for SEFILS. Even worse than NOT owning those results, is having something negative in them – the equivalent of someone hijacking your billboard and spraypainting hate slogans on it, or being allowed to buy the radio spot right after yours to tell everybody why your company sucks. I’m guessing someone’s getting fired if that goes down – so why then is it no big deal when it happens in the SERPS?

Unfortunately we can prevent or cure SEFILS, but we can help to treat it’s effects.

On a very related note was the excellent article on Google becoming the new http:

Guides:

• Brian Provost on Rep Management
• Andy Beal on Rep Management
• Li Evans – 31 Places to monitor your reputation online