A few more thoughts on online reputation management

Anyhoo, I registered aaron pratt awhile back for reputation management purposes. Google and MSN have me ranked #1 while Yahoo (who relies heavily on links and can be easily manipulated) still believes SEO Buzz Box is “aaron pratt”. My names footprint has been established and is ready if I ever decide to offer some sort of SEO services. If I find some nut ranking for my name and saying bad things about me, I can also create a buzz on my “name” site to bury the negative publicity. If I ever decide to close down this site (and believe me I think about it ever day now) I can redirect to my name site.

Did you know that Google has algorithms to protect your identity? If you blog about yourself to secure your name, brand, product or service the task is much easier today in Google, they are all about originating content.

Below is more names I rank for from old interviews I did on this website. Most I rank on page #1 in Google but a couple are on #2. It’s great I do not have any bad intent, I get traffic for all the names on the list and more.

Aaron Shear
Bill Slawski
Cristian Mezei
Dan Kramer
Dax Herrera
Jermemy Zawodny
Jill Whalen
Jim Boykin
Jim Westergren
Lee Odden
Mike Grehan
Philipp Lenssen
Rand Fishkin
Todd Malicoat

A quiz: Why does Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, John Scott, Danah Boyd, Michael Gray and Shoemoney show up further down in the Google search results for this site? Let’s take Shoemoney for example, does anyone remember his can you outrank me for shoemoney contest? Why do you think he might have done that other than to get thousands of links? That’s right; reputation management, he flooded the datapool. My Google hating, Matt Cutts baiting friend Michael Gray came close but NOBODY can outrank Shoemoney for any extended period of time. Why do the rest show up further down in Google for their names for this site? That’s right, they have HUGE numbers incoming links and well established footprints for their names in all the social areas which is another great way to flood out people who might try to rank for you with evil intent. Do not think others can not rank for your name either, remember the Dave Pasternack SEO contest? Yes, SEO is rocket science, if a group of people get together against you, you can be crushed, but even then there are ways to get back up top.

What can I do to protect my reputation online?

Get yourself a website or blog and establish yourself today, if you do not have the time, find someone who can represent your name, product, service or brand accurately for you! Just having a blog set up with a bit of information about whatever it is you are trying to protect is better than nothing at all. A blog is like having a well oiled tank, covered and fueled up in your garage. What do you have to rollout when someone attacks?

Relevant External Media:
Elixir Systems Online Reputation Management – PDF format

If I was Paypal how would I get this negative publicity site removed? Well this is a tough question because the only thing that will get sites algorithmically removed is google bombing or spamming. Damaging a competitor with negative publicity by buying a domain and telling the world how bad he/she is, is not Google bombing.

What if Paypalsucks.com was actually owned by a competitor who is looking to compete with Paypal credit card processing? It looks like this could be the case.

Notice the gray link (image below) on the footer of paypalsucks.com trying to influence search engines to rank a competitor for the phrase “credit card processing”?

Look around closer and you just might find other things that search engines like Google might be interested in, report it and sit back to see if they have broken enough rules to lose their reputation damaging position in organic search.

Remember, not all things that break Google’s guidelines can be algorithmically weighted so do all you can to find stuff for your report. Paypalsucks.com is not going to drop out of sight because of one spammy footer link but look around, they might be doing other things. If the site really was setup to damage Paypal by a competitor this also might encourage hand removal because the evil intent would be clear. Would Google be motivated enough to do this even if Paypal also competes with their shopping cart?

Another good way to bury negative publicity sites is to have a contest or create a buzz. Remember Shoemoney’s “rank for my name” contest?

How about using spammy services like payperpost or reviewme to fill the serps with reviews of your site? I wouldn’t suggest this for Paypal though but for personal reputation management it could really bury them. If someone is hurting you and search engines can not do anything about it be relentless in your attempt to crush those looking to do you harm.

Want me to show you how to bury negative sites if you have authority like paypal surely does? See Google own their reputation via sub domains. Check it out, Yahoo does the same. Google uses subdomains that bury all possible negative damaging publicity sites, they might not do it on purpose but this strategy can be accomplished by any site with the amount of authority Paypal has. Wouldn’t it be great to own three or four pages in search for your product or service?

I did so to:

1. Defend the honor of a righteous American.
2. As part of a personal study on how Google deals with Googlebombing today.

What I found is exactly what Google describes.

My favorite quote:

When we’re faced with a bad search result or a relevance problem, our first instinct is to look for an automatic way to solve the problem instead of trying to fix a particular search by hand. Algorithms are great because they scale well: computers can process lots of data very fast, and robust algorithms often work well in many different languages. That’s what we did in this case, and the extra effort to find a good algorithm helps detect Googlebombs in many different languages.

If you also do a search for failure our president no longer shows up which is a very good thing. Future online democracy should not be ruled by those who look to ruin good people. Think about that the next time you take part in a lame SEO contest to assassinate someone’s character.

Who’s looking out for you?

John McCain fought in war and survived torture. Those who look to destroy him were not even alive during WW2 and Vietnam.

Here I offer accurate links to a few John McCain websites to help keep them above the spin, it’s the least I could do.

Senator John McCain
John McCain in Wikipedia
John McCain – Straight Talk America
The McCain Exploratory Committee

Update: Google has finally updated their algorithm to reduce Googlebombs.