After I posted a scathing blog about a Facebook application someone named Sean added an obviously contrived comment to the post in an attempt to improve the tone towards that product. He was blatantly attempting something called ‘reputation management’ which in our Online World means to ensure that your personal or company name, or product/service receives positive results when searched for in Google (or other engines if you care about them).

So a search for that particular Facebook app obviously ranked in Google, which in turn meant that people looking for it saw my scathing comments; thus someone tried to redress the balance.

It’s not good for your reputation if when someone searches for you all they see is people slagging you off!

Now, you can do what Sean did and feebly attempt to answer the criticism by replying to the comments, forum posts or blog posts; or, a more successful but naturally more difficult tactic would be to ensure that nothing negative appears for your name when someone searches in the first place.

How could you do this? If you have sites like openly slate your name or product what can you do about it?

Simple, make sure that other websites rank above them. For example, if you Google my name (Darren Jamieson) you won’t see anything negative in the top 10 results.

Now I don’t own all of those websites, I’m not even the Darren Jamieson in question on some of them, but there’s nothing negative about me there. Don’t think for a moment either that it’s because I’ve not annoyed anyone enough to try, I have ;).

No, it’s reputation management in action.

If you have a problem with your online reputation and would like to know what can be done about it, don’t post comments on the forums and threads in question from made up customers of yours saying how good your services are, that doesn’t work. Give me a shout at Just Search, I’ll advise you on what can be done.

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