What will Brands and individuals do to protect their image online? The way it stands now, 1 bad experience with a customer or relationship can have significant damage to you. Protecting your Online Reputation involves several components but all revolves around one thing: Controlling what is on the first couple of pages of the search engines when someone types in your brand.

Funny thing happened when I asked the owner where the credit app was. He said, “Don’t worry, I Googled you, you seem to be legitimate”

Wow, I was floored. Here, he was telling a reputation management consultant that he Googled me instead of doing a credit report.

Then I thought about it for a while. Why not Google someone? Google will give you a much more accurate depiction on if someone is who they say they are than a credit reporting industry. But this does impose a huge problem for people not active in making sure their “Online Credit” is up to snuff. Make sure to get active and stay active as who knows, one day, people may use Google more than Experian for credit-based decisions.

The dental industry is one of the prime targets of bad reviews on Yelp. No one likes dentists, even the best experience would be considered sub-par at best. So is it fair that 90% of the dentists in Yelp have less than a 3 star rating?

It would seem to be that these so called review sites could formulate a mathematical equation per industry that calculates the normal % of people that complain versus praise and formulate that into their star rating system. It is only fair.

People need to start taking more precaution before going online to make a statement. In many cases, like comments on blogs, rip off report, etc. these things cannot be removed and website operators wont help. It is Rip Off Reports policy not to remove a thing, even if the complainer decides that they were in the wrong. It is there, forever.

Policing online slander will be a near impossible job. It is too easy and takes less than a minute to let people know how you feel online. You can remain anonymous, you can hide behind a false identity. No one can stop you. There is no body of regulation that can stop it. It is going to be up to the public to refrain from publicly humiliating whatever bothers them.

I did a quick assessment of their tips. The basic strategy is a good one, but certainly not enough to defend against bad press or protect yourself from a future attack. I do believe that you should be doing these things at the very least however.

Go check it out: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/managing-your-reputation-through-search.html

“Around 84% of consumers surveyed by Brand Reputation said that, compared with one year ago, they were more likely to search the Internet for reviews before making a purchase.”

When one consumer can destroy your entire reputation with a couple of hours of free time, it is more important than ever to control the first few pages of Google for your Brand and Product key phrases.