Copy Brighter

Imagine that one day, you are shocked to find your business name listed on a pornographic / adult spam page. Or someone has posted as copy of your driver's license or social security number on a website for revenge. Or what if you search for something harmless in Google Images... and find a deeply disturbing, xxxx-rated picture?

Asking Google to Remove Negative Links

Google offers a little-known service called the Webpage Removal Request Tool.

This tool allows you to request the removal of certain types of pages from its search index. Anyone with a Gmail / Google account can request that an offensive or "dead" page be removed. Google says they will personally consider all requests, and they will notify you when (and if) a page is removed.

Google tries hard not to play judge or arbitrator; they give you the burden of trying to contact the webmaster and and asking her remove the negative information, first. If the Webmaster agrees to remove the offensive information (lucky you!), you can then follow up with Google's Webpage Removal Request Tool to make sure the cache of the old version gets wiped out of Google's index.

If you are unable to contact the Webmaster or get them to cooperate in taking the bad information down, Google lists 4 kinds of web pages that they will consider hand-editing right out of their index. Pages that contain:

• Your social security or government ID number
• Your bank account or credit card number
• An image of your signature
• Your full name or the name of your business appearing on an adult content site that's spamming Google's search results.

are all eligible to be manually deleted from Google's index.

Even though those are the explicit criteria Google asks for, it wouldn't hurt to ask for the removal of any very offensive or defamatory page using this tool. At the very least someone with the power to take action is likely to take a look at it.

Explore this tool and let me know what you find out about it in the comments below!

Bonus: Hardcore Reputation Management Tactic According to Todd Friesen, if you find that a defamatory or negative page goes offline for ANY reason (such as server or DNS issues) - you can request that the page be deleted as a "dead or outdated" page with the Webpage Removal Request Tool. If it stays offline long enough while the request is reviewed, it will be removed from Google's index for 6 months.

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If someone has registered their own domain and set up their own blog or webpage, they enjoy broad freedom to publish almost any personal opinions or true facts - no matter how extreme or unflattering.

However, if someone is posting content on a public social media site, hosted blog, forum, or wiki - there is a good chance it falls under a formal terms of service ("TOS") or terms of use that governs what kind of content is permitted.

If you discover a negative or objectionable blog post or thread about you, you can easily make a case that it goes against (the spirit of) the site's TOS - and ask the administrators to remove it.

Why TOS' Exist

TOS exist to protect the site's owners from lawsuits, and also serve to protect the site's community from harm and disruptive behavior. When a site or blog allows anonymous comments, the owners are not liable for them. But when a site requires registration and collects personal information and e-mail addresses, as most social sites do, they have more legal liability to police the content. Therefore, the TOS serves as a contract that you must accept before signing up using the site, giving the owner explicit guidelines and rights to censor content and revoke privileges.

Find the Person With the Power to Take Action

If you are concerned about negative or defamatory information posted on a forum or community, start by creating an account on the service and contact the "room" or section moderator. Humbly and politely state why you feel the negative information violates the spirit of the TOS (drop a link or excerpt for reference), and ask if they would kindly consider editing or removing it. I've had success doing this.

If you can't get a hold of any lower-level moderators, you can always appeal to the webmasters. The TOS will usually list an e-mail address for report trouble or abuse.

Sometimes, though, these accounts either 1.) get too many e-mails or 2.) get checked very infrequently - and you won't get any response. In this case, look up the WHOIS information, follow the trail of clues, and use the phone or fax until someone takes a look and responds.

Good luck!

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Amazon.com is one of the oldest, most powerful, most trusted sites on the web. The domain was first registered in 1994 and it has 300 million+ inbound links - Google & Yahoo! generally seem to love it. Amazon also gives you multiple options to create user-generated profile and content pages; therefore, it's a great site to participate on you are interested in online reputation management.

Beware: Amazon has grown into a very complex "jungle" of a site and it can be usability nightmare at first. Hopefully this guide will help makes things a little easier for you.

A Real Identity is Required

Amazon takes precautions to know the real identity of the person content or reviews.

They have a "real name" feature where you can select from list of names and initials for your profiles and reviews, based on your credit card info. This protects people from anonymous defamation and impersonation. They also have an option for a "pen name" where you can post reviews and lists under a pseudonym in public (that is clearly marked as a "pen name"), but it is privately linked to your credit card so the admins know who you are. Note: if you enter in a pen name, your profiles and lists will automatically be switched over to it.

Working with your Amazon Profile

Click on the link that says "Your_Username's Amazon" in the upper left of the screen, and then click on the link in the upper right of the screen that says "Your Profile."

Your profile page has your name in the title tag and also in a nice, big H1 header - but URL customization is not available. You can upload a picture, add a followed link to any website of your choice, and also add content about yourself. Mention your full name once or twice in the text and it will be fairly well optimized or you name. The more reviews and lists you create - and the more friends you add - the more internal links you will create pointing back to your profile and the higher it will rank in the search results.

Creating a Listmania List

Amazon allows you to make a pages with lists of the products you like and recommend.

Go to your profile page, find the red "Listmania Lists" subheader, and click on "Create a Listmania List." It will ask you to name your list and you should put your name at the beginning of the list name - because it will show up in the URL and in the title tag of the list. Then add your name to the description of the list ("Hi, My name is Brett Borders and these are my favorite books...") to make the page better optimized. Then add some tags to make your list more findable. Finally, you can recommend any products in the Amazon catalog by clicking on the yellow "Add A Product" button and writing you reviews. When you're done, click the "Publish List" button at the bottom. You'll end up with a nice, optimized page on a powerful domain:

Working with "Key Phrase" Pages

Another page that can rank in the search engines are the "Key Phrase" pages.

These pages list all the books (out of those that are scanned and searchable online) that contain a given name or phrase. To see if there is a key phrase page for your name or brand, go to http:// www.amazon.com/phrase/ and then append your name or phrase to the end of it, separate by hyphens (ex. http://www.amazon.com/phrase/bob-smith/).

These key phrases pages can rank well with some external links pointing to them - but they can't accrue internal links as easily as your Listmania pages or profile page can.

As a general rule, if you don't participate much or add external links, the page is likely to get thrown into the supplemental index and not be visible in the search results.

A Few Useful Help Pages

Your Profile Help Page - http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=16465241

About Listmania Lists - http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=14279651&qid=1212272973&sr=1-1

About Key Phrase Pages - http://www.amazon.com/gp/phrase/help/help.html/ref=sib_pdp_hlp

Participation Guidelines - http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=14279631

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When negative or unflattering information about you or your company appears in the search engines, it's easy to panic. But before you rush to make a slew of new pages and profiles, you should be aware there is a more effective and natural-looking strategy: linking to existing pages about other people with the exact same name.

There are more people than names in the world. There's a few different guys with my not-so-common name. Same thing with company names... here are two company names I just made up: Matrix Marketing and Paradigm Plumbing. Google says there are multiple firms operating under these names

You can often find strong pages owned by people or companies with the same name as yours – and then build links to those pages to help camouflage the undesired search result. This usually works fast because the existing pages are old and already somewhat "trusted" by the search engines - and it looks extremely natural to human searchers, also.

The ideal page to "build up" has many of the following characteristics:

• It's on a strong trusted domain (.edu / .gov is great)
• Your name is in the title tag.
• Your name is used in an HTML headline.
• Your name is used several times in the body copy of the page.
• The page has some toolbar PageRank.
• The page ranks in the top 100 for your name.
• The page has few or no links pointing to it.

Why do you want a page with few links pointing to it? Because, most often, these "neglected" pages will rise in rank quickly with just a little bit of links.

How do you check if the page has any links pointing to it? Just go to Yahoo and type in "link:www.example.com/example.html" and see what it shows. Better yet, install the Firefox plugins SEOpen or SEO for Firefox.

Then you can use advanced Google queries to help you find pages that meet the rest of the criteria:

Find all pages with your full name listed anywhere:

"Bob Smith"

Find pages with your full name listed in the title tag:

allintitle: Bob Smith

Find pages on CNN.com with your full name listed anywhere:

"Bob Smith" site:cnn.com

Find pages on .EDU sites with your full name listed anywhere:

"Bob Smith" site:.edu

Find pages on .GOV sites with your full name listed anywhere:

"Bob Smith" site:.gov

Find pages on .MIL sites with your full name listed anywhere:

"Bob Smith" site:.mil

Find pages with your name in the title tag, on .EDU sites:

allintitle: Bob Smith site:.edu

Find a strong page that meets most of the criteria and make sure it looks like a permanent page that is unlikely to change. Don't choose a college senior quarterback's page that will get deleted in 6 months, or a wiki that can be edited by anyone - because the downside of this technique is that you don't have any control over the page.

Then, build a couple of good links to it –– slowly -- using variations of your name as the anchor text (Bob Smith, Mr. Smith, Bob).

If you choose well and link smartly, it can outrank negative information quickly and it will look more authentic than an obvious overload of Naymz and Rollyo profiles.

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You've probably heard a workplace revenge story before... where an ex-employee pulls a stunt to inflict revenge on a former employer.

An interesting online reputation management issue is company "shadow" sites, where current employees of a company create an anonymous website to communicate on. They offer each other counsel and moral support, and they also try to expose their grievances against the company.

I recently came across a revenge site published by employees of a financial services firm. On the anonymous forum, they describe the operation as glorified telemarketing scam. They also accuse the management of using dramatic psychological terror tactics to keep them productive and afraid. (Sorry, but I can't link to revenge sites.)

It gets nasty: it spells out details of managerial sexual affairs and drug habits, as well as internal company business processes.

An IRS employee found the site and posted, saying she had sneaking suspicious about this company, and that the site confirmed what she thought.

The lesson: it's all transparent now. We have to be on our best behavior because anyone can leave "feedback" for the world to see. Lawsuits, coverups, payoffs, intimidation, and "no one will ever find out" thinking is quickly becoming a thing of the past, thanks to the open nature of the internet.

The scary thing about this new openness is there is no fact-checking or human editorial control, just cold algorithmic ranking and primitive semantic analysis done search engine computers.

Reputation Management Song

So, here's a little online reputation management song I just wrote. It's sung to the tune of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town"

You better not scam,
You better not lie,
You better not steal - I'm telling you why:
Goo-gle bot is watchin' your brand.

He's making an index,
keeping it diverse
Gonna tell the world who "sucks" (or even worse)...
Goo-gle bot's defining, your brand!

He knows if there's been cheating,
He knows if you're a fake,
It's all out in the open now...
So be good for reputation's sake!

Soooo... You better not shaft,
You better not spy,
You better not fleece - I'm telling you why:
Goo-gle bot will tell the whole town!
Goo-gle bot will tell the whole town!

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Online reputation management services require a very personalized touch.

A good provider must have intelligence, intuition, patience, stealth, and strong communications skills … plus successful, non-theoretical experience with public relations, SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

image: jcardnial18

It’s a complex, emerging skill set which relatively few people or agencies can smoothly deliver, yet. So before you trust someone else to manage your online reputation, you should be aware of some of the risks and pitfalls that could happen:

• They will hire unskilled, overseas workers to post random content and gibberish under your name. This won’t do anything except waste your money and make you look like a grade school dropout. Unfortunately, quite a few of the firms you’ll find in searches for “reputation management” specialize in this type of service.
• They’ll build spammy links that will cause your sites to get mistrusted by the search engines. Some providers don’t understand the importance of link building - they just make lots of profiles and hope for the best. Others will try to get you some links, but they’ll get quick, spammy links that will ultimately harm your website and profiles’ reputation in the search engines. The best firms have their own portfolio of high-quality web properties to get links from, and they work with smart, English (or native language) speaking SEOs to build the right links and keep it authentic.
• They’ll create hokey, praise-filled content - making it obvious you are trying to “cover up” something. I call this the “bad plastic surgery” effect. Some firms will awkwardly deny everything on your behalf, write cornball press releases, or commit other not-so-transparent blunders that will make people more curious and fixated on any negative information.
• They can monitor your reputation, but can’t really deliver effective solutions to any problems that arise. Monitoring your reputation is important. And responding to a negative comment or forum post is usually a good idea, but it’s not as effective as actually removing the post or thread. Skilled reputation managers can use SEO and social media marketing to make negative information less visible in the search engines - so people are less likely to even see it in the first place.
• They’ll upset your defamer, or unwittingly “tip them off” them to what you’re doing. If someone contacts people on your behalf in the wrong tone, or if it becomes obvious that you are awkwardly trying to “manage your reputation” (suppress their content) - it can get very ugly. Defamers can get even more vengeful.
• They’ll make profiles or content for you that will be discovered and publicized as a fake. If someone writes content for you that is discovered or called out as a forgery, it can make your online reputation exponentially worse. Wal-Mart was eaten alive for this, so was Jet Blue. Social media audiences are incredibly discerning as to what is “authentic” or not, and they love to dish out harsh vigilante justice on anything that smells fishy. You don’t want to be the target of this!
• They will provide you with few details of what they are doing. Be aware of operations that promise big results, but have no information listed on their own websites or blogs about what they actually do. “Proprietary” or “secret” processes oftentimes mean “questionable” or “non-existent.” Yes, there are things that should be confidential — like previous clients’ campaigns or identities — but you have every right to know what someone is going to do if you hire them.
• They will create sites or accounts for you and then hold them “hostage.” Some firms will register sites for you (like YourName.com) and create blogs and profiles, but then refuse give you access to them. They require you to keep paying their monthly retainer indefinitely or they threaten to pull the plug on any progress they have made. This is extortion. You should insist on registering all websites in your own name, you should demand a list with the logins and passwords to all accounts and profiles a firm creates, and all work they do should be “yours to keep” — forever — even after your contract with them is finished.
• They will take your money and do nothing. There are some greedy, slick-talking SEO and reputation management firms who will take anyone who calls - regardless if they have the time or expertise to deliver for you. In contrast, the best SEOs and reputation managers are in-demand and are less likely to be affordable or to have available time for your case. Therefore, it can be much easier to get signed up with a huckster than to hire a solid provider.

image : jarkel

Beware of online reputation management services for cheap or promises to repair your online reputation quickly. It may be very tempting to believe someone has a “magic bullet” that will quickly make your troubles go away overnight, but it’s unlikely to be true.

Doing online reputation management yourself will often yield the most authentic results, but it is a complex and time-intensive process that many people need help and guidance with. Just be aware of the possible risks, do your research, and pick a firm you’d feel comfortable to have representing your personality and brand in all types of online situations.

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Lawsuits used to be a relatively powerful, discreet and efficient way to handle professional grievances.

But the internet changed things.

In the highly-transparent, online world... reputation lawsuits can very easily backfire. Threatening or filing a defamation lawsuit is more likely to harm your online reputation than to improve it.

Threats Make People Want to Retaliate

A real life example: Once, I moved to a new city and began to look for a job as a copywriter. I needed relevant material for my online portfolio, so I included a script that I wrote while working at a previous agency. My former employer saw it, and they had their attorney send me a nasty legal threat letter outlining specific fees and court costs. Apparently, I had signed some kind of NDA one my first day at the company saying that they owned everything I created while working there. I honestly didn't remember that particular clause in the 5 page "employee agreement" that my new boss asked me to sign on the spot.

But... the fact that they threatened me right off the bat, rather than just talking to me about their issue first, made me quite angry.

I quickly called up my old boss at home and said:

"Hey! If there's a problem with the content on my website, call me and talk to me about it first. I'm pretty reasonable. There's no need to threaten me or play lawyer games. If it's such a big deal for you, then fine, I'll take it down. But if you ever send me any more threatening letters, I will post my opinion about your company and your legal threats online – for everyone to see!"

I felt quite emotional. I didn't like being suddenly threatened without warning. My instinctive "animal" reflex wanted to bite back.

And many people respond in a similar way. Or much worse. It's hardwired, mammalian territorial behavior.

Why Threatening a Lawsuit is Generally A Bad Idea

• The First Amendment generally protects people's right to post their opinions, impressions and facts.
• Website owners cannot be held liable for comments posted by anonymous users.
• Webmasters have the legal right to link to whatever pages they want to.
• Lawsuits bring out the most stubborn and unforgiving side of people - particularly in sadistic online defamers- causing them to seek more online revenge.
• Legal proceedings often create official memorandum pages on high-ranking court & government sites.
• Your case can be picked up by major blogs and news aggregators, creating content about the case and powerful links that are virtually indelible.

However, there are some situations where threatening and/or filing a lawsuit can work out:

• If someone is deliberately trying to defame you with information that is verifiably untrue, you might have a case.
• If someone is threatening harm or violence, you might have a case.
• If someone is infringing on your logo or copying your original content, you might have a case.

But if someone is merely reporting news or stating an unflattering opinion / perception about you or your brand, you probably don't. Talk to a lawyer and make sure that you do have a case, and be prepared to act on it before you threaten it. Most importantly, be prepared to accept all the potential negative coverage and backlinks if you do decide to get litigious.

lawsuits often create indelible links on high ranking websites

Even if you are successful in court, online news and blog coverage of your case is very possible. These articles and citations about what happened can remain visible for years or decades, marring all your online reputation management efforts. And making empty lawsuit threats can make your defamer want to dig their heels in and publish (much) worse content about you online.

Kindness Usually Works Better Than Threats

I've found that the most effective way to deal with negative content is to appeal to people's conscience and humanitarian "good side," first. Tactfully explain the impact their content is having on your life / business. Ask if they would consider making changes to it, or remove it, if applicable. Ask how you might be able to help them in exchange for their cooperation with helping you.

I have successfully gotten people to remove negative links by asking kindly, or in exchange for giving them a positive links. I've had inaccurate headlines and title tags changed by suggesting better ones. I've gotten negative reviews "fixed up" by editing them and sending over the proofed and improved version in HTML they could conveniently copy and paste in. I've gotten full cooperation by a establishing connection with greetings in the Webmaster's native language, or asking them interesting questions about their country.

The trick is to be pleasantly persistent. Almost every webmaster is busy, has a full inbox, and wants to know: "What's in it for me?" They rarely respond well to lengthy / complex / threatening e-mails. Short, sincere, highly-personal personal messages have the best chance of being read, comprehended and acted upon. Make the connection. Simply explain the situation. Kindly ask for the cooperation. And pleasantly follow up for a couple of weeks, if necessary. If you're nice, they may be inclined to help you just to get you "off their case."

If kindness and concise communication - and patience - fails to remove the negative content, then you can think of trying a more forceful or confrontational next step.

But, most of the time, you will never have to!

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I had a great time at my first social media conference, SMX Social Media in Long Beach, CA. I enjoyed getting to meet some of the top players in the search & social media marketing industry, such as:

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz, Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land, Jimbo Wales of Wikipedia, serial entrepreneur and Twitter kingpin Jason Calacanis, and #1 Digg user MrBabyMan.

I also met a ton of amazingly nice,  highly-talented marketing mavens:

Toronto SEO Jeff Quip, Utah SEO Jordan Kasteler, action sports publisher Cameron Olthius, Guillame Bourchard of Montreal SEO company NVI, social media consultant Brent Csutoras, social media strategist Reem Abeidoh, Shinsuke Usami and Kazumasa Harumoto of Japanese shopping site EC Navi, social media agency president Rob Key, New York social media consultant Chris Winfield, Chiropractic SEO Michael Dorausch, small business SEO Matt McGee, Michael Gray, Kid Disco, Scott Clark who gave permission to use the photo above, Jane Copland from SEOmoz, Lisa Barone, Nick Dynice, Abhilash Patel of Rank Lab Interactive, and social media rock star Neil Patel.

It was cool to meet so many people experienced at running and scaling a SEO / social media business and talking to them about how they did it. They led me to believe that I can do the same.

And thanks to the generous people who bought me dinner and drinks every single night.

I'll see you on the flipside -- from behind the podium -- one of these days!

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Sometimes a negative result will stick to the front page of Google's index, and it will won't move easily – no matter how much content or links you create. In these situations, removing the links that point to a negative page can make it appear less relevant, and therefore less visible in the search results. By following the same general procedures as link building, you can persuade Webmasters to remove links to negative pages.

Undoing Negative Links - image:mesho

There are currently three main strategies for reducing the relevance of negative search engine results:

1. Build up positive and neutral content to outrank the negative page.
   
2. Negotiate or pull strings to get the negative page removed.
   
3. Ask other Webmasters to remove their links to the negative page.
   

I call the third technique "reverse" link building. It works best in smaller cases where there are less than a hundred links to the negative page. Reverse link building is challenging because the Webmaster has already written content and decided to link to a negative result - and you have to convince them to re-think their decision and change what is there. People can get really analytical and philosophical about why they are getting edited or censored - and look "too far" into your request.

Here are some best practices for removing links to a negative article:

Find All the Links to Negative Page

Go to Yahoo Site Explorer. Paste the full URL of the negative article into the search box and click the "Explore URL" button, then click the blue link that says "Inlinks." This will show all of the pages linking to the negative article. An easier way to do this is through install SEOpen, an excellent SEO extension for Firefox.

You can also look at the trackbacks of a negative blog post to see which other blogs are "endorsing" it - or you can look in Technorati for "reactions" to a blog or blog post. Make an exhaustive list of all the negative links in a spreadsheet. Then go examine the sites closely to see where they link to the negative content.

Finding the Person With the Power to Remove the Negative Link

The first challenge is finding up-to-date contact information for the Webmaster of each site that links to the negative article. If you're really lucky, you'll find a working e-mail or phone number listed on the site. Otherwise: do a WhoIs and write down all the phone numbers, use the contact form and look at the source code, Google search for any nicknames, look closely into any affiliate links for clues, check the backlink profile to find related sites linking to it. Look into the internet archives cache or prior registrations to see if you can find the old owners. If you still can't find any clues or solid contact information, then leave a blog comment or guestbook post – or even place an order (!) – and leave a note with your e-mail address, asking them to contact you about an urgent matter pertaining to their website.

Using Tact and Persuasion to Negotiate Removal

For the initial contact, I've found it's best not to get too detailed and heavy right off the bat. Start by making a connection and showing that your e-mail is not spam.

Hi! My name is Brett, and I appreciate the detailed information you have up at ExplicitVitaminReviews.com. For years I have taken Vitamin C to boost my immune system, but I had no idea the brand they sell at my local K-mart is biologically inactive. I'll definitely look into the California Sunshine line of supplements you recommend."

Next, you're going to have to ask VERY nicely, and make a good case for why the link should be removed. You might want to save it for the next e-mail or a phone call, and just establish connection with the first contact. If you come across as a threat, hassle or annoyance at any point in the process - you will lose. Be friendly. And be pleasantly persistent.

Reasons Why They Should Take It Down

Often times, Webmasters "innocently" link to negative articles because they are trying to be fair and balanced – to tell both sides of the story. Explain that the article is having a negative impact on your website, and give some of the following reasons why it should be removed, if appropriate:

1. The information is out of date.
2. The information is false / inaccurate.
3. The website is a bad neighborhood you don't want to link to.
4. The article is a 'revenge piece' written by a competitor.
5. The link doesn't really add any value to their readers.
6. There is a much better contrary view at http://example.com
7. The link means little to them, but has significant impact on your site

If e-mail doesn't get a response after a couple of tries, move to telephone and lastly send a non-threatening personal letter. Ask for the removal with kindness and humility. If that doesn't work, then offer to help the webmaster by giving them links, sending a thank you gift, or doing whatever you can to help their business and website. As a very last resort, you can offer payment.

If they are adamant about keeping a link to a negative article, suggest another better-quality article they could link to or ask them to rel="nofollow" it.

If you're really patient, intuitive and cool... you can get many of those negative links undone by using this strategy. A few weeks later, when all the pages get re-crawled, the negative result will appear less relative to the search engines.

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Just as there are countless "credit repair" companies who claim they can erase past debts, there are now a multitude of reputation management firms claiming they can "remove negative search engine listings."

A Spotless Reflection. image credit: benprks

So, can negative listings actually be removed from Google? Not just making them less visible by pushing them down off the first page... but actually making it so the page no longer exists?

"Yes, it is possible to remove some types of pages."

But the most common kind of web reputation damage - strong pages on strong domains that have been consistently ranking for months or years - are often incredibly difficult to budge. The owner won't take them down till hell freezes over, you have no valid legal case, and Google won't give your (more recently created) pages the same weight.

But negative results can sometimes be permanently changed or removed with persistence, tact and savvy. Here's how:

8 Ways to Remove Negative Results from the Google

1. Ask Nicely
I've gotten nasty information removed by calling the blogger and having a nice long "blogger to blogger" talk with them. Appeal to their conscience. Explain why it's good for them to change the information, and explain why hosting negative or defamatory info might reflect poorly on their own website. Don't accuse them of bad journalism or insult them - respect the effort they took to make the content but urge them to consider an alternate headline, tone, etc. Ask if there's anything you could do to help them out in exchange (write a review, give a link, do SEO for their site, send them a "thank you" gift, etc.).


2. Ask the moderator to remove the offending thread or post
Sometimes the author of the information won't budge, but a forum or social site moderator will want to avoid conflict and will be more receptive to removing defamatory or misleading information. It usually doesn't hurt to ask.


3. Audit the site for Google Webmaster Guidelines violation, and report them
Check to see if the site is buying or selling any paid links, keyword stuffing, hiding text, cloaking content, or doing anything else in direct violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. If you find anything spammy, report the site to Google or report paid links inside of Google Webmaster Tools console.


4. File a DMCA Takedown Notice
If the site is infringing on your trademarks or copying your content, and they are located or hosted in the USA, you can file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice with the OSP (online service provider) and if that fails, you can file it with the search engines. Check out this excellent guide to enforcing copyrights.


5. Offer a Cash Payment / Settlement
Some people have successfully offered a cash settlement to have negative information down. A lot of online bloggers are in it for the money, and so are most of the reputation extortionists (Web publishers, like the RipoffReport, who encourage and directly profit from anonymous complaint content). It could be cheaper and easier to "pay to make it go away" than to pay for months of reputation management, content and link building efforts. Beware, though, of opening yourself up to ongoing extortion. And be careful of what you put in writing. You might want to contact the webmaster anonymously, by telephone, to test their response to such an offer, rather than send them a written letter or e-mail that they could reprint on their website.


6. Threaten a Lawsuit
You can send an official-looking letter threatening to sue people for defamation, and that could be enough to scare people into taking down content. Beware: if you threaten to sue someone, make sure you have a case and actually plan on following through with it, if necessary. Many times, I've seen legal threats backfire and make the situation flare up much worse. Threats of litigation bring out a harsh and unforgiving side in people, and it can prompt your defamer to want to "stick it to you" even worse.

For more detailed legal information on some of these suggestions, ChillingEffects.org or any of the excellent posts of SEOmoz's legal expert Sarah Bird are great places to start.

Blackhat Reputation Management Tactics:

It's important to be aware of some of the more heavy-handed tactics, even if you don't practice them yourself:

7. Negative SEO
For a long time, people believed that "nothing another Webmaster can do will be able to harm your websites' rankings." According to some black hat SEO experts, that is not true anymore. Negative SEO techniques, such as link spamming or buying penalized sites in a similar niche and 301 redirecting them to to your competitor's pages, are "enough to have a relatively dramatic impact on rankings." This Forbes article on negative SEO is pretty well-done and interesting.


8. Counter-Attack the Reputation of Your Critic
Some people have successfully counter-attacked their defamer, by anonymously exposing "fabricated" details of their past, making a YourDefamerSucks.com site, or filing a ripoff report about their business. This would theoretically give you a stronger bargaining position to suggest that you mutually withdraw the negative information - by kicking some empathy into your defamer. I haven't done this, as I am not really a "digital hitman" for hire - but I've heard others have done it successfully.

The Importance of Making Good Web Karma

In the social media era, we all live in very transparent, digital "glass houses." And throwing stones is as easy as a few clicks on the keyboard.

Remember that defaming others on the Web can have a profoundly destructive impact on their business, career and life.

Interact with kindness, humanity and positivity and start creating positive content now to build a spotless reputation on the Web. Monitor your reputation, and quickly and tactfully respond to grievances and to make sure they don't escalate or get cemented into the search results.

And think of these removal techniques as an emergency last resort, when all else has failed.

I'd love to hear your own ideas and experiences with removing negative links in the search engines. Please leave your comments below...!

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