With the rise of the Internet and the use of search engines like Google, knowledge of persons and companies can be acquired within seconds and often not to the benefit of the search targets. It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that dozens of companies have popped up with express purpose of protecting online reputations.
“The more that online becomes integrated in our lives, the more important it will be to have an integrated reputation,” adds Zeus Kerravala, a senior executive handling research at the Yankee Group. “There’s a need for these services now.”
A study by Oxford Metrica said that 90 percent of consumers trust what others have to say about a brand, with 83 percent of brands facing an image crisis of some kind in the next five years. Even if the quality of products and customer service is high, problems may still crop up.
“Sixty percent of the time, the attack is competitor-generated,” says Fionn Downhill, CEO of reputation management firm Elixir Interactive. “A [rival brand] decides to put you in RipoffReport.com. Customers will attack you, too. Some have legitimate complaints but some are just shitheads.”
“Things never die on the net, whether its a false claim of a CEO being a sex offender or a real DUI arrest from 20 years ago, it can come back to haunt you. Court proceedings are posted online,” explains My Reputation Manager operations director Terry Boothman. “So say someone had a false accusation made against them. It s a little hiccup but that record is permanent, and too often it comes up.”
“Usually, these services will provide some sort of flattering original content, making sure the article sees a lot of links and add in social media. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube videos we’ll create all that, [then have] the brand do it for itself,” Boothman says, who says the entire process, he adds, “is like a a creative little spider web.”
“The point that mission accomplished can be declared once the negative posts are pushed beyond the first page of results. Still, a major scandal is not going to be so easily whitewashed. You have to create content that s more relevant than the negative story that s sensational and that s going to be tough,” says Trackur’s Beal. “Unless you ve created the cure for cancer, it s going to be hard to come up with something positive enough to move up in the Google search results”.
“With Google continuing to to refine its search algorithms, it may hamper the success of these sorts of companies in the long term. I don’t know how long-lived these tactics will be,” says Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “There will be an arms race between people trying to game the search engines and the engines themselves.”
Source: AdWeek
