Some people in this world have for one reason or another encountered really bad press for there actions. Google can be a bloody nightmare to disrupt negative press from. In fact its long been rumored that the algorithm tends to favor negative pages (OK not really, I am sure its just a correlation to links)
With an increased effort by Google as of late to place varied search results into the SERPS and the roll-out of Google suggest there are a myriad of ways to get slammed.
Lets take the following 4 people for example:
Michael Vick Reputation Problem
Eliot Spitzer Reputation Problem
Bernie Madoff Reputation Problem
Pacman Jones Reputation Problem
If you are a figure head or celebrity, or anyone who ever needs a squeaky clean reputation for that matter, be proactive. Fill up those results with content you control. Utilize your sources to link to assets with positive sentiment. Two folks who have done a pretty good job of this (intentional or unintentional I don’t know) are Kanye West and Michael Phelps.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Excellent advice. I had a client that had this same problem. With much work, time, and a solid strategy, things cleared up by about 95%.
That’s funny, I noticed how good Kanye’s rep was the other day, too. You have to consider that he’s someone with a ton of online properties and being an outspoken entertainer, he gets a lot of coverage (i.e. links) to those properties. Sports players and politicians are far less likely to have the same level of sophistication online, which means they can’t survive a disaster as well as Kanye did. Also, the Kanye conversation happened mostly on Twitter. Sure there was a ton of mainstream coverage, but it died down. With those other guys, there were court cases and press conferences meriting continual mainstream news coverage and internal linking within those sites to related stories. That builds an authoritative disaster area!
Really nice breakdown! Can’t wait to see ya again at Pubcon.
Just had another thought. I don’t think any of the above guys were internationally recognized names. I would wager that Kanye West and Michael Phelps were known around the world before their drama and as a result have a ton of international backlinks and far more social mentions.
Yup (limited to six searches, but Google Insights had a nice breakdown):
http://kl.am/googleinsight
@ryan Thanks!
@rhea Great point. Insights does backup that though thought process pretty well and I bet if I whipped out the monitoring tool it would further legitimize it.
I still cant get over that flick off shot by Vick in the SERPS.
See yah in a month
Great post! What a nightmare it would be to handle ORM for someone like Vick.
I have to agree with @Rhea that any celeb who receives more coverage (i.e. not famous because of one disastrous event) has a better chance of surviving in the SERP’s. Vicks, Spitzer, Maddoff were all relatively unknown before their major news stories.