Last week, Andreas Tuerk, a Product Manager at Google announced a new tool to make it easier to monitor your reputation online along with some helpful tips to manage your reputation on the web. The new tool, Me on the Web, appears as a section of the Google Dashboard right beneath the Account details.

Like Google Alerts, the new tool can be used to set notifications for online mentions of your name, brand, company or email address. Me on the Web also provides some helpful resources to help control information that is posted about you online – touting the creation of a Google Profile as a great way to boost your web presence.

Although described as a bold new foray into reputation management, Me on the Web is more of a basic reputation monitoring tool that will provide the casual user with sufficient data to track his or her online reputation.

Me on the Web is missing analytics and metrics to evaluate trends, measure sentiment and analyze the sources of online mentions. This is a glaring weakness for an otherwise valuable service.

Business users and professionals who require more advanced reputation monitoring will need to look beyond Me on the Web towards other social media and reputation monitoring services. However, the arrival of Google and the development of Me on the Web furthers the legitimacy of online reputation management and heralds future developments from and beyond the Googleplex.