One search related practice that has gained significant coverage over the past few months is reputation management. I often find it quite hard to explain the full effect this can have, the following examples should shine some light on the subject:

1.       Jimmy Wales AKA Wikipedia founder

This should serve as a really good reminder to any well known internet figure on the value of reputation management.  After using the rather questionable practice of breaking up with his girlfriend via editing a Wikipedia entry, Jimmy's ex decided to firstly put a t-shirt of his on EBay, this combined with several bloggers and news sites writing about the row led to some rather embarrassing results.

Due to over a month having passed and "Jimbo" being frequently referenced online, the story has luckily dropped towards the bottom of the 1^st page, a month ago it was also dominating blended news and blog search results for his name

2.       Splenda

Search for Splenda and 3 results down you get the following; you can imagine the impact this could have on customers doing research on their use of Splenda.

3.       Vista

Sitting at number 4 on the first page for "Vista" is the free software foundation site against Vista adoption. I would love to know Microsoft's thoughts on the matter.

The only real solution to this is a highly targeted link building campaign, choice of sites and link text always being the key factors.

There is also another form of reputation management that exists beyond search; this is in the forms of online reviews and discussion. It is becoming more and more important for businesses such as hotels and restaurants to be aware of the power of negative reviews. Gone are the days when an unhappy client just voices their opinions at their close acquaintances.

Reputation management in this form requires you treat every customer like a critic... the only true way to manage your reputation is to make sure the good reviews dwarf the negative ones.

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