In yet another integration with Bing, Klout announced Bing Search will now influence Klout scores. That is, how many times a person’s name is searched for on Bing will factor into how influential a person is on Klout.
“We think this is exciting because we believe search is one of the most direct indicators of real world influence and serves as a bridge between offline and online influence,” Klout said in its announcement.
Uh, yeah, search can show real-world influence … but just relying on Bing info isn’t really a real-world indicator of search volume, is it? And how does this factor into the average user whose name is like that of many others?
Klout used Warren Buffet as an example of who this feature might be good for:
“Consider someone like Warren Buffett. Obviously Warren has tremendous real world Klout, but he isn’t particularly active on social media, with only three Tweets to his name. His relative influence can be challenging to measure with just the available online data,” Klout said.
OK, but what about the people who actually use Klout? Well, there’s something for brands:
“A great example of who this will help is Women Fitness,” Klout said. “In 2010 and 2011, their website was recognized by Forbes as one of the ‘Top 100 Websites for Women.’ While they have a very influential online presence, it was difficult for us to measure their Score due to the gap in measurable data.”
And as for the average user? I happen to know I’m not the only Jessica Lee who is searched for online. In fact, a search for my name brings up a whole slew of Jessica Lees who aren’t me:
For now, I won’t be integrating Bing into my Klout score, because I already know how that’s gonna turn out.
But you can enable Bing Search for your Klout score by logging in and heading to your connected networks.