Online Reputation Management- A discussion.

In this age of information superhighway and the internet, it is easy and quick for anyone to malign the Online Reputation of your company or your business. Needless to say, in the world of business, everything depends upon reputation. The “Satyam” story in India is one such example. There are however cases when people use the internet for slandering an organization out of personal motives or aspirations. A bad publicity or rumor will certainly invite feedback and reviews. The worst nightmare for entrepreneurs is when a prospective client types the company's name in "Google" or "Yahoo" and an article with negative-feedback appears at the top of the list.



To set this right, many companies have resorted to a reputation management approach or Online Reputation Management. This approach involves restoring damaged online reputation or feedback by moving the negative searches and replacing it with the positive search results. To achieve this, specialists on Internet marketing and promotion, public relations and search engine optimization are hired.

The approach to Reputation Management technique agrees that it will not be possible for negative searches to be deleted from the search engine. However, statistics have shown that most users will not be looking past the first page. So by introducing positive contents, which will be entirely client directed or conceptualized, these positive results would be streamlined to rank higher in the search engines results.

Other approaches include improvising on branding or filing a defamation suit by hiring a lawyer who specializes on reputation issues.

The only risk I see here and a potential one for everyone is that phony companies may employ the services of online reputation restoration companies. My view is that these concerns must have been raised in the past and have already been addressed.