Time to Update Your Avvo Profile – Avvo Rating Updates
As we wrap up 2009 with all sorts of “best of” lists, it’s worth reminding all of our lawyer readers to update their Avvo Profiles during the less-hectic holiday season (unless you are working on the Senate health care bill). This is for a couple of reasons:
First, per usual, we will be conducting our “end of the year” Avvo Rating updates. While we update individual Avvo Ratings throughout the year, we typically reserve the end of the year for our biggest global tweaks to our scoring algorithm. These changes are largely the result of feedback from our consumer- and lawyer-users throughout the year. We also find ways to refine our mathematical models to ensure the Avvo Rating is as accurate as possible.
Second, the biggest ratings changes due to “aging” in a lawyer’s Avvo Profile typically happen on January 1. As you may recall, the value of many elements of an Avvo Profile erodes over time, so a 20-year-old award, sanction, etc., is less interesting to the Avvo Rating algorithm than something that occurred, say, last year. If we don’t know the month of an element, the aging change occurs at the first of the year.
Net/net, some lawyers will see changes to their ratings; and the more robust and up-to-date a lawyer’s profile is the less chance that any of these factors will have a negative impact on their rating. We expect to push through all changes by the end of January 2010 (btw, that feels so odd to write . . . weren’t we panicking about Y2K just a couple of years ago?).
And, if this post doesn’t give you your daily dose of Avvo, I did a recent podcast with Adrian Dayton’s posse where I talk a lot about Avvo and its different ratings. You can listen to it here. Thank you to Adrian and all of the participants on the call – it was a lot of fun.
Thanks,
p.s. I used Cliff Tuttle’s Avvo Profile because, interestingly, when you Google “Avvo Profile” Cliff’s profile is the first result. We are doing something wrong (or Cliff is doing something very right) in ranking for this term.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Dear Mark:
Why do you think you doing anything wrong when my AVVO Profile comes up first on a Google search of “AVVO Profile”? Something has to come up first. Moreover, I assure you that I have not done anything to make this happen. Its just the luck of the draw.
However, you make a good point when you suggest updating profiles. As a result of answering some landlord-tenant questions on AVVO Answers, I have been receiving inquiries and landlord-tenant practice is now my fastest growing practice area. It isn’t even mentioned on my current profile.
I sure hope updating my profile doesn’t knock me off the top slot on Google.
CLT