There are many tools you can use to check and monitor your reputation, and what I don’t want to do is rehash the ones you’ve already read about ad nauseam (Google Alerts, the social media monitoring soup du jour, etc.). The list I’ve compiled below contains five tools to check your reputation in ways you might not have considered. Let’s get started.

 

1.  UberSuggest (http://goo.gl/gAm4q)

 

UberSuggest.orgis a tool that shows you many different variations of your Autocomplete values. For example, if you are Xerox, UberSuggest will show you what displays in Autocomplete for “Xerox A,” “Xerox B,” etc.

 

2.  IFTTT.com (http://goo.gl/5aO6h)

 

I love handy little tools like IFTTT.com, which stands for “IF This, Then That,” an old programming staple. On the site, you create “recipes" which are made just like their namesake implies:

You create a ruleIF that rule occursTHEN your desired action occurs

 

So, why is this a great tool for your ORM Toolbox? It allows you to monitor websites pretty easily.

 

For example, I use IFTTT to monitor Wikipedia pages. I grab the RSS feed of the Wikipedia page, add that as the first part of the recipe, and set the rule so that anytime the RSS feed is updated, I get an email in my inbox with a notification.

 

3.  Complaint Site Search (http://goo.gl/sAeID)

 

Something that was born out of necessity was a search engine that could go through all of these complaint sites and identify brand and name mentions on them. We couldn’t find a tool that easily did that, so we built a simple one using Google’s Custom Search tool, and it is pretty effective. Just plug your name or brand into the complaint search box and you’re off!

 

4.  ImageRaider.com (http://goo.gl/lxC50)

 

If Google’s reverse image search were automatic and continual, it would be ImageRaider.com. You simply upload your unique images to the site, and it will routinely crawl the Web looking for any websites that are using them. This can be a powerful link-building tool (hat tip to Ross Hudgens and this incredible slide deck), and it can also be helpful for ORM.

 

5.  KnowEm.com (http://goo.gl/OMnV8)

 

KnowEm.com has a free checker to see if your desired name has been taken on more than 550 different types of social sites. KnowEm also has some great rates on registering the names for you and setting up profiles with your information populated in the main fields.

 

Monitoring your reputation is an ongoing effort, and there will always be new places that you will need to be concerned about. Six years ago, you didn’t have to worry about Twitter, and two years ago you didn’t need to worry about Pinterest. As the landscape of the Web evolves, so too will the properties you need to monitor and the tools necessary to do so.