Social media agency Yomego’s analysis shows that Google’s Nexus One is in fact beating the iPhone in terms of reputation online, despite reports that the phone has had a slow start in terms of sales (just 20,500 handsets in its first week according to mobile analyst firm Flurry).

In the first week after its launch, the Nexus One achieved mainly positive coverage despite reported connection and shipping problems. It beat the iPhone and Palm Pre in terms of sentiment, even though there were higher levels of noise around Apple’s phone.

Yomego analysed online exposure of all three handsets using its Social Media Reputation Audit, which uses a combination of sentiment tracking, monitoring and language recognition technology combined with human analysis. As we’ve previously covered, this is the only way to accurately analyse online chatter, as using technology alone just isn’t comprehensive or sophisticated enough to understand the nuances of the human language.

Yomego’s metrics aggregate scores for reach (‘noise’) and sentiment online, revealing which brands make the most out of social media channels.

Steve Richards, MD of Yomego, said: “Our experience and evidence underlines a direct correlation between a rise in social media reputation score and a corresponding and commensurate rise in sales. Alternatively, if a  score takes a sudden dip, clients are given an early warning to address their strategy if upcoming sales figures are not to suffer a similar fate.”

However, it’s important to put this in context. Just because most of the coverage online is positive, this doesn’t automatically mean that the handset will produce higher levels of sales. Hopefully though, positive reviews will have a knock-on effect, producing a long tail for Nexus One sales that is slower on the uptake – but larger in volume.