Just stop for one moment.
Think about where people go to find out about your company, your client, your product, your service or your industry.
It’s pretty straightforward.
They use a search engine.
Search Engines are incredibly important in ensuring that your company is top of mind among current and prospective clients.
I’m always amazed at how few PR people think about search engines. Understanding Search Engines, IMHO, is central to understand how you manage online reputations – and drive business.
But there’s another side to Search Engines….
There was a very interesting story in yesterday’s UK Sunday Times entitled "Smeared on the internet? Call in the cleaners".
Firms such as Reputation Defender (US), Tiger Two (UK) and Distilled (UK) offer services which promise to ensure that the top search results about you are positive.
This isn’t just simple search engine optimisation however.
The services ensure that only friendly entries appear on the first few pages of results when a client’s name is run through search engines such as Google.
It’s reputation cleansing.
Reputation Defender charges $25,000 per year for the basic service rising to $300,000 for the premium version..
Michael Fertik, chief executive of Reputation Defender, said one of his clients was an academic psychologist in London anxious to “bury” the fact he had written about his own depression.
“Demand for the service is extremely high. Almost all our customers are private individuals and our top clients are high-pro-file business people,” said Fertik.
Cleansing your online reputation… // Feb 18, 2008 at 7:41 am
[...] Technology Magazine wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt Just stop for one moment. Think about where people go to find out about your company, your client, your product, your service or your industry. It’s pretty straightforward. They use a search engine. Search Engines are incredibly important in ensuring that your company is top of mind among current and prospective clients. I’m always amazed at how few PR people think about search engines. Understanding Search Engines, IMHO, is central to understand how you manage online reputations – and [...]
Hmm, interesting, but it seems kind of scammy to me. I agree that search is an important part of PR. I am considering buyng a subscription this year to WorldTracker and seeing if I can make some headway.
Kami,
I agree, there’s something that just doesn’t smell right…
I also recommend looking at WordTracker. There’s also loads of great advice and resources on the web about SEO and SEM.
TM
Do a search on Reputation Defender, the results are not uniformly positive. But it is certainly possible to bury bad results by tagging everything positive. It is amazing how much a single del.icio.us tag will impact search results. If you encourage your whole company to use tagging the effects are that much more powerful.
Of course this won’t work for basket cases such as Halliburton, or Blackwater, but it works just fine for the ordinary Joe Doe.
A quick google-search shows that Reputation “Defender” is a pretty worthless idea. Just ask their former clients…
http://onlinereputation.googlepages.com/consumerprotection
Reputation Clensing « Acflo’s Weblog // Feb 25, 2008 at 12:39 am
[...] 25, 2008 My PR professor posted a link last week to Tom Murphy’s PR blog “Murphy’s Law”. The post talked about reputation cleansing on the internet. Simply put, there are a few companies [...]
A Tide Pen for Your Rep « Confessions of a Student Government junkie // Feb 25, 2008 at 2:30 am
[...] 25, 2008 I read an interesting post this week about a company that claims they can clean up you online reputation.What lengths will [...]
Cleanup on Blog 8,468,097. « Crisis in Conversation // Feb 25, 2008 at 8:35 am
[...] yeild links to only positive comments about your product, brand or company. The post, titled Cleansing Your Online Repuation, describes how now-a-days, people jump to their search engine of choice to find out about a [...]
Murphy’s Law » You need to manage your client’s online reputation // Feb 27, 2008 at 8:22 am
[...] on from my post last week on cleansing your reputation, last Sunday’s UK Times has a follow up written by Rosie Millard on her personal travails [...]
Enterprise or human reputation is very important, to much in real life as in search engine result page!
I can see why a company / person would like to bury bad comments etc.
If I am researching a company / person I will go back lots of pages in google. I wonder how deep these people can bury!