After years of neither supporting nor embracing Online Reputation Management, it looks like Google has finally decided to tell people it’s okay to care about how your appear in Google search results, and they’ve even offered some tips to help. In a recent post to the official Google Blog, Susan Moskwa, a Webmaster Trends Analyst for the company, provided some advice on how to remove content from the web and also how to promote positive content.
ON REMOVING CONTENT
If the content in question is on a site you own, easy — just remove it. It will naturally drop out of search results after we recrawl the page and discover the change.
It’s also often easy to remove content from sites you don’t own if you put it there, such as photos you’ve uploaded, or content on your profile page.
If you can’t remove something yourself, you can contact the site’s webmaster and ask them to remove the content or the page in question.
After you or the site’s webmaster has removed or edited the page, you can expedite the removal of that content from Google using our URL removal tool.
ON PROMOTING CONTENT
Create a Google profile. When people search for your name, Google can display a link to your Google profile in our search results and people can click through to see whatever information you choose to publish in your profile.
If a customer writes a negative review of your business, you could ask some of your other customers who are happy with your company to give a fuller picture of your business.
If a blogger is publishing unflattering photos of you, take some pictures you prefer and publish them in a blog post or two.
If a newspaper wrote an article about a court case that put you in a negative light, but which was subsequently ruled in your favor, you can ask them to update the article or publish a follow-up article about your exoneration. (This last one may seem far-fetched, but believe it or not, we’ve gotten multiple requests from people in this situation.)
While it’s great to finally have Google officially promoting pro-active Online Reputation Management, I believe that their advice is somewhat oversimplified. Susan is exactly right when she says that people should contact the site’s webmaster before they contact Google if they are attempting to remove negative content. However, contacting a webmaster isn’t always easy. It’s not as if every website on the Internet has a blinking red button that says “Click Here to Complain.”
If a site has been abandoned, it can take hours or days even to track down the person responsible for it. Not everyone has the technical proficiency or time to go jump over all of those hurdles, which is why so many people have turned to us here at Reputation.com. On our MyReputation team, we have a dedicated and experienced group of professionals who know all the ins and outs of removing content from the web.
As to promoting content, Google’s advice is similarly well-intentioned, but weak. If a blogger posts pictures of you, you could combat it by posting your own, but what if the blog in question gets thousands of hits a day and has a very strong page rank. To defeat deeply entrenched content on the web, a person would have to understand the importance of keywords, link strategies, domain registration, and more. For most web surfers, the time and effort required to successfully promote their positive content on the web is too much to handle on their own, which is why we developed MyEdge. Since taking on our first MyEdge customer, we have helped countless men and women from around the globe share their good names online.
We would all be much happier if it were easy to repair and promote reputations online, but that’s not how it works. Perhaps as the web continues to evolve, it will become easier to manage information online, but, until then, if you have a problem with how your name appears online, make sure you have an expert on your side.
Meghan McCain, the daughter of former Republican presidential candidate John McCain, exposed more than her political leanings last night when she posted a picture of herself in a revealing black tanktop on Twitter. The image, which can be found below, immediately set off a firestorm of criticism for McCain with many commenters calling her “slut” and other derogatory names. In response, McCain has contemplated leaving Twitter all together, a la Miley Cyrus (whose recent departure from Twitter has prompted considerable consternation among her fans).
Risque pic, or Calculated PR Stunt?
There are others who are not offended by the content of the pictures, per se, but rather the belief that McCain staged the event to gain publicity. For her part, McCain claims she “took a fun picture not thinking anything about what I was wearing.” If she did mean for the picture to gain publicity, then she was successful. According to Google, “Meghan McCain Twitter“ is one of the hottest search trends on the Internet right now and this story has been repeated at Mashable, on the Wall Street Journal, and everywhere else under the sun.
For all of her detractors, there were also a number of people supporting McCain’s “spontaneous” decision to post the picture. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of these supporters are young people who believe that the Internet is a place for free expression, no matter the circumstances. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the truth. Granted, the only reason this picture has received the attention it has is because of McCain’s celebrity status. Nevertheless, for many young men and women across the country, posting inappropriate pictures on the Internet can make it difficult to get into school or find a job. If you are active on social networking sites, remember, you must always, always, always THINK before you POST.
You know that poke feature on Facebook? The one that serves no other purpose than to perplex your friends and family? Some would say that such an egregiously annoying and vaguely inappropriate sounding feature is criminal. Still, I seriously doubt most people would agree that you should be arrested for poking. Nevertheless, that’s just what happened to a Tennessee woman last week.
To be fair, the woman wasn’t arrested for her Facebook poke, but rather for violating an order of protection. The court order prohibited her from “telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the petitioner.” Some might argue that a poke isn’t a mode of communication (indeed it doesn’t communicate anything besides an utter disdain for your Facebook friends’ time and patience), but, until there are more clear laws defining digital communications, prosecutors have to be creative in how they decide to prosecute Internet offenses.
We’ve seen people get served over Facebook, but this is the first time we’ve seen a poke lead to possible jail time. For more information on the “poke heard round the world,” check out the news report below.
Teaching is a noble profession. Not only do teachers have to put in long hours for little pay, but they give up much of their freedom to do so. Of course, I’m not talking about their literal freedom, but rather their digital freedom. To be a teacher is to be a role model to hundreds of children year in and year out. That means that they have to set strict limits on social networking. What would you say at the next parent-teacher conference, if one of your students had found a picture of you on MySpace sipping away at a novelty-sized margarita?
A recent article in the Salt Lake Tribune explored the issue of teachers and social networking, asking whether teachers are unfairly held to a higher standard for their conduct online.
From the article:
One Utah teacher’s personal MySpace page included links to Web sites about homosexual groups.
Another used her MySpace page to complain about students and parents.
A third Utah teacher included pictures of herself drinking.
Were these teachers practicing freedom of speech and expression during their off hours or did they cross a line professionally? In the relatively new realm of social networking, many such questions fall into a gray area. Most Utah school districts don’t have specific policies addressing how teachers, in their free time, may or may not use social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and personal blogs. State educator standards require teachers act as role models and maintain appropriate contact with students, but the standards don’t define exactly what those terms mean.
Some teachers use social networking as an instructional tool, but it can also be a minefield when used by educators in their personal lives. Like many technologies, it has the potential for both good and bad, experts say.
The article goes on to cite specific ways in which teachers manage social networking, namely by keeping it very private.
Is it fair that teachers are held to a higher standard when it comes to social networking? Many would argue no. On the other hand, many would also argue yes. I, for one, would argue that the fairness of the situation is irrelevant. Yes, teachers are role models and should therefore be more aware of the image they are projecting to the world, but isn’t that true of everyone?
Whether we like it or not, we are now living in the age of Google. Thanks to the Internet, any novice web surfer can search your name and the city where you live and, within a few short minutes of digging, probably find some relevant information about you. Why wouldn’t you want to project your best possible image online?
Finding the appropriate balance between your personal life and your digital life is a problem faced by all professionals, not just teachers. What are you doing to ensure that your reputation is protected online?
Watch out what you say online: it could be used against you in court. As briefly reported by Eric Goldman, an appellate court in California just upheld a vehicular manslaughter conviction based on the defendant’s MySpace post that bragged “I have a really bad habit of racing random people.”
In 2006, Henry Chavez died in a high-speed crash on Highway 101 in Oxnard, California (just up the coast from Los Angeles). Witnesses testified that two Mustang drivers had been racing with each other around 10:30 a.m. According to witnesses, both Mustangs were weaving through freeway traffic at 100 to 115 miles per hour. At 10:32 a.m., Chavez lost control of his car as he tried to change lanes. His car struck the center guardrail, skidded across the road, struck a car on an on-ramp, then flew off the ramp and rolled into a strawberry field. Chavez was killed. The other driver did not stop.
Eventually the police found the woman who had been seen driving her Mustang alongside Chavez that morning and charged her with manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident. At trial, she admitted that she had been driving her Mustang on the 101 at the same time. But the woman claimed that she was an innocent bystander who had just been trying to get out of Chavez’s way.
The prosecutor introduced testimony by people who had seen the woman racing. But the prosecutor’s most powerful evidence came from the defendant herself. The day before the accident, the defendant had posted a message on her MySpace profile: “If you find me on the freeway and you can keep up I have a really bad habit of racing random people.”
The jury believed the MySpace post and convicted the driver of vehicular manslaughter and felony hit-and-run. The judge later sentenced the driver to one year in prison. A California appellate court just upheld the conviction (PDF) based on the MySpace post.
The lesson is clear: prosecutors are willing to use evidence from social networking sites as proof in criminal cases, and courts are willing to admit it. This woman’s boastful post about her love of street racing came back to haunt her in court, and may have cost her a year behind bars. Whether it is fair or not, the reality is that prosecutors and police know to check social networking sites for evidence of crimes and for statements that can be used against the defendant.
Think about it: What do you have on your profile that could be used against you? Could anything you say be taken out of context? Would your privacy settings allow anybody to see it without a subpoena?
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After years of neither supporting nor embracing Online Reputation Management, it looks like Google has finally decided to tell people it’s okay to care about how your appear in Google search results, and they’ve even offered some tips to help. In a recent post to the official Google Blog, Susan Moskwa, a Webmaster Trends Analyst for the company, provided some advice on how to remove content from the web and also how to promote positive content.
