Some people, or companies, spend years building up a reputation with other individuals or customers. Warren Buffet once quoted as saying, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” Warren Buffet has long been called the “Sage of Omaha” for his wisdom in all things financial—but here he imparts a bit of wisdom that is applicable both to everyday life and to a niche industry: Internet Reputation Management. This industry began in 2006 as a way to protect minors in an online world that was becoming more and more invasive, via social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook. The industry has, since then, become a much more effective tool for combating what some call online vandalism of search results.
So what is online vandalism? When you put someone's name into a search engine (generally Google), you will see a page of results, a Google front or Google wall. These results are determined by a formula, an algorithm, used by that particular company. This formula places importance on things like linking, traffic, etc. By using this formula, the search engine is able to take any search term and give you the most important links, the first ten of which are on the first page. It is this first page that is most important, since most people rarely click through to a second or third page of search results. Your online reputation essentially consists of what people can find out about you, or your company, by searching you online—so these search results have become quite important in shaping the publics opinion about celebrities, companies, and products.
Often when you search for a restaurant, company, or person you will see negative results. This is an example of a negative online reputation, which is sometimes deserved, and sometimes undeserved. It is easy to understand how someone could get a bad reputation and it be deserved, but there are many cases of undeserved bad reputations too, just as there is in real life. We have all experienced it, one of our friends has a bad reputation with someone else we know because of a miscommunication or isolated act. The same thing happens on the Internet, except in a much more severe manner. This is because from the bowels of the Internet, any angry commenter, disgruntled employee, ex-boyfriend, or unsatisfied client can hurl insults and untruths at an individual or company. These negative comments will often show up in the top search results of companies and individuals, resulting in online vandalism, or web defamation.
The most effective way to combat this damage to a company or individual's reputation is not to comment on the blog posting, article, or forum post, this will only serve to increase the popularity of the negative link. The guaranteed anonymity of the Internet allows any user to maliciously attack you or your company's reputation without suffering any consequences. Ignoring this assault on your reputation is not an answer either, though, since more and more people are looking to the Internet, and search engines especially, for information about products, companies, and individuals. Internet Reputation Management is an industry which helps to solve this convoluted problem. They help their clients, those whose reputations have been maligned, by publicizing them positively. By understanding how search engines work, Internet Reputation Management professionals are able to decrease the rank of negative links in an individual's or company's search results and replace them with positive articles or blog posts.
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