It’s a simple Online Reputation Management technique for small businesses. You blast out your company info to local business directories like yellowpages, uscity, citysearch, angieslist, etc.

This will flood new positive/neutral sites into your Google results and may even help a little with lead generation. It’s also relatively cheap. There are many companies online that will manually submit your business informtion to a hundred or so local directories for a few hundred dollars.

So, why isn’t everyone doing this?

When it comes to your business there is an enormous difference between sites that you can control and sites that you cannot. We call these control sites and non-control sites. Control sites in your Google results are generally safe. Control sites are simply web sites that allow you to approve any content  that is published online about your business. Your twitter, FB, Google+ though social sites, would still be considered control sites.

Unfortunately most of the local directories fall into the non-control site category. There are different degrees of risk in non-control sites. There are a few great non-control sites that screen reviews and require verification that the poster is an actual customer/client of your company. However, these safer non-control sites are few and far between. Most non-control sites do not require any sort of verification and can put your brand in a very precarious position online.

This morning I randomly picked one non-control site which is a local business directory that is frequently submitted to in these local directory submission services.  I pulled up a local business listing and this is what I found,

I clicked on “Write a Review” to see if they had a verification process, but this is all of the information they needed.

Yes, anyone can post whatever they want to in those little white boxes and that is exactly why you should avoid local directories. The majority of them are simply high risk non-control sites. These sort of sites can be a playground for unethical competitors, disgruntled employees, that one crazy customer you have, etc.

We are currently working on an in depth list of safe non-control sites where you can submit your business information. When we have completed this data I will share it here. Until then I would avoid adding your business to random local directories.

Thanks for reading!

Chris Martin
Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz

What is so amazing about Linkedin right now?  Keep reading!

Most everyone is aware of the security breach at linkedin. If you are reading this and are unaware than in short someone hacked linkedin.com, exposed about 6M passwords, lots of media coverage, linkedin heightened security measures to make sure it doesn’t happen again, sent out press releases, etc, etc, etc.

Noone wants that sort of publicity and in actuality it could happen to any government or organization on the web. This is what is so incredible. So right now according to Google Trends 200,000+ people today Google’d “Linkedin”. Wow! Those are big numbers!

Now considering the mass amount of unwanted media coverage regarding the breach you would think these Googler’s are seeing an absolute mess when Googling “Linkedin” right? Wrong! It’s incredible. Check this out,

1-3 in Google under Linkedin

Linkedin.com at # 1, their wiki profile, and their app on the app store. Nice!

#4 in Google under “Linkedin”

This is usually when the news feed kicks in. Now things should surely start getting ugly right? NOPE! It’s all positive spins on the breach! Wow.

5-7 in Google under “Linkedin”

Now you definitely expect to find some negative media coverage, a lengthy post about the dangers of social media etc, right? NOPE! It’s their Twitter, Crunchbase profile, and their app page on Android. WOW.

8-10 in Google under “Linkedin”

Now you think this is impossible and the front page is going to get ugly at least toward the bottom, right? NOPE! It starts with this polite looking lady with an article on how to use Linkedin, moves onto their Mashable profile and then a profile on Yahoo Finance!

Absolutely fascinating! Where is the Google Freshness Algorithm? It doesn’t seem to have affected this search at all! Why?

I just checked and there are backlinks pointing to Mrs. Doyle’s linkedin how to article from 2009! This article on about.com has been online for years! Right now Linkedin has massive amounts of fresh publicity on hundreds of major media outlets. So naturally you would think  the Google Freshness Algorithms would be picking up on this content and covering the front page like we see here But as we can see, the Linkedin search results are perfectly fine.

So what can we learn here? Evidently not every company/person is at the mercy of Google Freshness Algorithms in the midst of an intense and unwanted media storm. The Google news snippet section of the front page is the only area that covered the breach. I would say it’s safe to assume that in a few weeks there will be no mentioning of the breach at all in the top 20 when Googling “Linkedin”. Even now the majority of the unwanted press is page 3 or lower in Google (outside of the top 20).

From an ORM perspective this is quite fascinating and there is an absolute wealth of information right now in Linkedin’s search results. In my experience you learn so much more about Google in cases like this than typical SEO related news/rumors.

Unfortunately at this time there are more questions than answers in this post. There are some things I do not understand at all like how the about.com article from 2009 is still on page 1 while fresh content on sites like CNN.com and a plethora of others is in the supplemental results. This does not coincide at all with my understanding of the Google Freshness Algorithm. I’m still digesting this and will be for quite some time. If you are involved in ORM you may want to Google “Linkedin” and save the top 100 for research purposes.

Thanks for reading!

Chris Martin
Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz
Have a question? Check out ormforum.com

The other day I took my wife’s car to the shop because it had an oil leak. So first I went to Google to find the dealership that was closest to me.

There was one within a 5 minute drive and the other would easily take 20-25 minutes to reach. The problem is the one right next to us had 12 Google reviews and most of those reviews were all terrible.

Here are a few quotes,

“They will %&$^ your car up to no end.”

“I went and picked it up my car and brought it to someone who has a concept of time.”

“DO NOT GO HERE!!!!!”

“The repair shop is a joke on all levels.”

Seems like it would make sense to avoid this place right? The problem is we have two toddlers and an infant and everyone in my shoes knows the extra 20 minute drive is a big deal. So, I decided to take my chances.

I pick up our car the next day expecting a tire to fall off on the way home. That didn’t happen, but here is what did;

- They were super polite.

- The service guy called me asking if we had an extended warranty. I couldn’t remember (too much going on in my brain) so he said if it was okay with me he would dig through the car and try to find the paperwork. He found it and everything was covered.

- When I picked up our car they were again super polite and everything was fixed perfectly.

- They washed and vacuumed our car almost to the point of it appearing brand new.

This experience made me wonder. I calculated that these guys average between 40,000 – 50,000 customers a year. All of those customers and there are only 12 Google reviews many of which paint a very negative picture of their service. That struck me as fundamentally unfair and I think anyone would see it as off balance. So, I started thinking about Negativity Bias on the ride home.

Negativity Bias is considered a psychological phenomenon.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

Check out these two bullet points from Negativity Bias in Wiki,

** If a person has a good experience and a bad experience close together, they will feel worse than neutral. This is true even if they would independently judge the two experiences to be of similar magnitude.

** When given a piece of positive information and a piece of negative information about a stranger, people’s judgment of the stranger will be negative, rather than neutral (assuming the two pieces of information are not severely imbalanced).

This is article in Psychology Today discussed negativity bias in the framework of a marriage,

“Because of the disproportionate weight of the negative, balance does not mean a 50-50 equilibrium. Researchers have carefully charted the amount of time couples spend fighting vs. interacting positively. And they have found that a very specific ratio exists between the amount of positivity and negativity required to make married life satisfying to both partners.

That magic ratio is five to one. As long as there was five times as much positive feeling and interaction between husband and wife as there was negative, researchers found, the marriage was likely to be stable over time. In contrast, those couples who were heading for divorce were doing far too little on the positive side to compensate for the growing negativity between them.”

You can’t help but wonder if this can translate to customer experience. Does your customer have to have 5 times the positive experiences with your company to outweigh the negative? Even so, the data I am looking at would suggest the 5 to 1 ratio would only bring the customer to a neutral outlook on your product or service.

So here we have a force like the internet that has created a simple, global stage to post anonymous reviews about people and companies. We now combine that with the pyscological phenomon of negativity bias which according to most studies affects the masses.

Do you see the need for Online Reputation Management?

Chris Martin
Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz
Have a question? Check out ormforum.com

This is just an FYI for those who are considering submitting a copyright removal request to Google. 

It’s an easy thing to do and takes less than two minutes. Naturally people tend to have this, “It’s simple and worth a shot” mentality. Keep in mind Google will only remove the content based on proof of an actual copyright violation (DMCA). There is no reason to submit a removal request based on defamation to Google. It will just waste two minutes of your time and two minutes of Google’s time.

Let’s say you do however have a case of copyright infringement. Is this a quick and easy fix? Yes, technically it is. But, there is however the possibility of backlash.

Currently, any time you submit a DMCA notice to Google the notice is made public on chillingeffects.org  You can read up on chillingeffects here, it’s basically a nonprofit geared toward protecting anonymous free speech on the internet among other things.  When you submit your DMCA request to Google, chillingeffects will publish the notice. They will hide your personal details in the letter but include your company name (copyright owner) and the name of the company who submitted the request.

Here is the potential online backlash,

- The DMCA notice could appear in your company’s search results.

- Depending on your situation this could birth new cases of unwanted publicity under your name or your company name.

- If the listing is removed from Google this will appear in it’s place,

In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.

I’m definitely not saying you shouldn’t submit a DMCA notice to Google, I’m just saying there is a bit more to it then filling out this quick form and going along your merry way. Every situation is unique and you need to weigh the probability of backlash in your situation before submitting a Copyright Infringement notice.

Also check out this link - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/transparency-for-copyright-removals-in.html

Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz
Have a question? Check out ormforum.com

Reputation Defined

1) The beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something.
2) A widespread belief that someone or something has a particular habit or characteristic.

From Wikipedia,

“Reputation is a fundamental instrument of social order, based upon distributed, spontaneous social control.”

In 1994 you probably had a local reputation unless you auditioned on Star Search. The beliefs and opinions about you as an individual were for the most part shaped by those you encountered directly or indirectly.

In 1995 NSFNET was decommissioned and the commercialization of the Internet began. This launched your shift from a local reputation to a global reputation.

It took roughly 10 years for companies to figure out the best way to index all of the information on the internet. It started with Directories and quickly morphed into search engines. Around 2005, Google Base launched and over the next few years became the dominant search engine on the internet. Fast forward to 2012 and there are 10 billion web pages on the internet and traffic worldwide is now measured in monthly Exabytes (1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes).

This is the backbone of your global reputation and it means that billions of people on the planet have instant access to information about you.

Today, someone on the other side of the world can get a quick glimpse into your involvements and possibly details about your personal life in less than 60 seconds. That same person can post information about you at their sole discretion in less than 180 seconds. Compare this to 18th century England where cases of Defamation were rare and limited to information that was published in the local newspaper.

So where does your global reputation start?

Googling people, places, businesses, is a phenomena that is only growing stronger and becoming more ingrained in the lives of everyday people.

It may not always be Google, but it definitely could be. The market share of the Silicon Valley company is mind boggling.

Given this major revolution in Reputation it’s a good idea to become acquainted with your Google results. Right now you have a bit of a head start. In five years there could easily be thousands of web sites that are posting mass amounts of data all trying to occupy the front page of your search results to get an extra slice of ad revenue.

I’m plugging one of our tools here but it fits – Check out Repumatic, it’s free. Even if you don’t want the CORE sites that Repumatic creates for you in your top 10, use them to link to your social profiles which will push them higher in Google and give them more staying power.

So if you are reading this than you probably live in a modern society and therefore you have a Global Reputation. There’s no reason to let that fact freak you out, it’s something we are all adapting to. Fortunately there are some really cool tools out there to put you in control of the process.

Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz
Have a question? Check out ormforum.com

So you have this web site toward the top of your search results that displays a little row of gold and white stars. Unfortunately your company’s listing has two gold stars and three white stars. This isn’t good. Maybe it’s due to poor customer experience or maybe it’s a competitor posting fake reviews, could be both… So, what do you do?

If you look online every company seems to have the same answer – post positive reviews. I even noticed one company advertising a service where they send your customers a feedback form that is designed to psychologically persuade the customer to post a positive review. Seriously! That’s how they actually advertise it. How is that even possible? Is it like,

Question # 4
How would such a beautiful and intelligent person like yourself rate your overall positive experience with our company?

Strange stuff out there… I digress. So, maybe that is the case and you need to figure out creative ways to get more positive reviews posted on these sites. That’s fine just remember this one important tidbit. Google has a freshness algorithm that is basically like, “mmmm yummm Fresh content… You move higher… I like you.”

So each time you post a positive review on a web site whether it’s yelp, trip advisor, yahoo reviews, etc it’s like throwing a rock into a pile. There are some rough, ugly rocks in that pile so you decide to have some customers toss in some nice polished ones. That’s good and all but sooner or later there will be so many rocks in that pile it’s there to stay.

Staying Power!

Got it? It’s an ORM term. When you post reviews you increase that web site’s staying power in Google under your company name. In my opinion, unless it’s Google reviews, try to get that site out of your top 20 and it will be one less thing to worry about.

Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz
Have a question? Check out ormforum.com

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Most people assume they will never have a mugshot. But, let’s face it you could have a big glass of wine at dinner, drive home, get pulled over, register .09, and now you have a mugshot.

(Update 5/23/2012 – Here’s another scenario for you. Our local City Council just passed an ordinance that states people who let their grass grow too tall could face up to 60 days in jail in addition to a $500 fine. Not only that but they included a section stating not just your lawn but the grass around brush and trees. So evidently they are drop dead serious about weed eating around here. Just saying – some of us may be a less likely recipient for a mugshot but it’s still possible!)

So, that being the case you need to know about an emerging industry that could affect you, a family member, or a friend in the future.

Here’s how it works,

1) Bob registers a domain name like mugshotshereworld.com

2) Bob sets up a web site on the doman that pulls public data from local government web sites.

3) As previously mentioned you had a big glass of wine at Dinner and now have a mugshot.

3) Bob’s web site now contains thousands of pages that get updated automatically. Each page contains a persons name, what they are accused of, and their mugshot. Now you are on Bob’s web site as well.

4) Search engines like Google index all of those pages including your mugshot.

5) You Google your name on Monday morning and see your mugshot at the top of Google image and your profile on Bob’s site at # 3 in the web results.

6) You panic and visit Bob’s web site mugshotshereworld.com and see a link that says, “Remove Mugshot Now”

7) You click on it and send $89.95 to Bob’s paypal acount.

Your mugshot is removed. Unfortunately it doesn’t end there. Many other people all have the same idea as Bob and they created their own mugshot web sites who also want you to send them $89.95. In theory this could go on for the rest of your life.

What do you do?

Start building your web presence if you have not already. You need to create a protective barrier under your name so that if something like this does happen in the future it causes a very minor problem, not a major one.

Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz
Have a question? Check out ormforum.com

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