Digitally Distinct

According to the algorithm(s) in use by the "Online ID Calculator", my online brand is "digitally distinct" rather than digitally dissed, digitally dabbling, or digitally disastrous:

This is the nirvana of online identity. A search of your name yields lots of results about you, and most, if not all, reinforce your unique personal brand. Keep up the good work, and remember that your Google results can change as fast as the weather in New England. So, regularly monitor your online identity. That way, if something negative, such as an anonymous ad hominem attack on your character on a blog, crops up, you can address it quickly, before it gets out of hand.

My surname, while it might be "verbally dissed", is apparently helpful in the online world. The dimensions of input originally entered to compute my online brand resulted in the following graph:

According to the creators of the "Online ID Calculator", this tool is "the first and leading tool" of this type, and that "until now, there has been no way of evaluating the strength of online personal brand".

Results are based on seven dimensions:

• total number of Google responses for provided name
• total number of Google responses on the first page of results
• total number of Google responses not about provided name (i.e. they are about someone else with provided name) in first three pages of results
• relevance of Google results on first three pages of results in regard to personal brand relevance
• aspirational career level
• whether personal web site or blog appears on first page of Google results
• whether any negative or unflattering Google results appear on first page of Google results

It is quite apparent that the "Online ID Calculator" is not only Google-centric, but uses two rather subjective dimensions in its calculations, both of which are associated with personal opinion on brand relevance.

Substituting "Manager with 5-10 years' experience, Director, Consultant or Small Business Owner" with "VP, Highly-regarded Consultant or Acknowledged Thought Leader", for example (there are only five closed-ended choices provided), results in the following:

Still "digitally distinct" according to the algorithm(s), but a bit closer to "digitally dabbling".

Other than the dimension for the total number of Google responses for provided name, which affects the Y axis, however, the permutations of possible entries for the various dimensions covered by the algorithm(s) that affect the X axis are rather limited.

In addition, of course, reside the presumed interpretations of the following:

• reputation of the Google search engine
• volume range of search results for the upper two quartiles and lower two quartiles
• volume range of search results within each aspirational career level
• definitions of aspirational career levels, especially in light of a broad spectrum of careers
• other definitions, such as "negative" and "unflattering"

It is possible that some of these interpretations are relative, based on the growing pool of respondents, in which case calculation results might prove interesting, but in the absence of such statistical relativity, results provided by the "Online ID Calculator" essentially boil down to one of four quartiles that can be easily visualized by stepping through some simple reasoning.