Online Reputation Management
With the ever-increasing importance of the internet in our daily lives and the ubiquity of search engines to deal with it, the results, particularly the top results, of searches are more important than ever. Fortunately, or unfortunately, people are able to manipulate these results using techniques like adding links to and from specific websites, and other tweaks to the network that alter the result of search engine algorithms to place specific sites higher or lower for a specific search. This is called search engine optimization and is a fairly large business, but there is another related business that is quite interesting, namely online reputation management. Online reputation management is the act of moving results for a specific company or person so as to be beneficial to that person or company.
More specifically this management usually deals with removing bad press or harmful results from the top and pushing the more positive articles or opinions up the search results. For example, a doctor might employ online reputation management to ensure that the first result for his name is not a list of all the malpractice suits against him, or a company might ensure that when searching for its brand there are no articles about how they use child labor during manufacturing. In order to do this a variety of techniques can be applied based on the nature of the search engines algorithms.
The recent onset of social media complicates this business greatly by allowing anyone’s opinions to show up in search results. Therefore, online reputation management strategies have begun to involve positive reinforcement in the social media sphere by creating facebook, twitter or other accounts for important brands and people. Using these social media sites allows them to put out many positive results and to directly respond to any open criticism or bad publicity events. In addition more traditional techniques are still being used in the business such as adding and removing links. The overall effect of this reputation management can greatly improve the way a brand or person is perceived, but whether this ability to change how one is perceived is a good thing is up in the air.
References:
http://www.visibilitymagazine.com/location3-media/tarla-cummings/online-reputation-management
http://www.anvilmediainc.com/search-engine-marketing-resources/search-engine-marketing-articles/online-reputation-management-article