VentureBeat

updated
Visible Technologies, one of the more prominent companies that helps people and companies track their online identities, has raised $12 million in financing.

Like competitors Buzzlogic, Radian6 and others, Seattle-based Visible Technologies has developed software that tries to find mentions of clients on web sites.

Its Truview product analyzes search engine results on clients, tries to determine if the mentions are positive or negative, then sends a report to the client and tries to connect them directly to the site where the mention was made. Its TruCast product analyzes conversations on blogs, forums and other community sites.

Visible Technologies shows trends in how a company’s brand is being received over time, who the influential people are who are talking about the company, and what parts of the web are giving the company the most attention.

Public relations on the web is a tricky business: The near-limitless amount of information freely available means more things can always be said about a company than a company can realistically respond to, even with such tracking technology. When companies do respond, they risk sounding fake. A string of uniformly bland and positive statements about themselves sounds like PR spin to most people, not independent opinions.

Buzzlogic (our coverage) provides rival products to help clients measure overall traffic to a source site, that site’s number of inbound links and relevance to a client. It also checks for how frequently a site publishes on the topic and how much traffic it sends to the client.

Radian 6 (our coverage) tracks information on sites by analyzing incoming RSS feeds.

The funding was led by Ignition Partners. Visible Technologies previously raised $3.5 million from WPP Group, an advertising conglomerate.

Update: The company is now worth about $30 million, according to some reports.