Google Alerts tip off Katy Perry to Russell Brand’s proposal

Serial womaniser Russell Brand is about to tie the knot with singer Katy Perry, but his shock proposal wasn’t so much of a shock for the blushing bride to be. Perry admitted that she knew Russell was going to propose because she’d read about him buying engagement rings on the Internet.

How did she find this information? Rather that spend hours trawling through websites and search engine results pages (SERPs) looking for what her promiscuous boyfriend was up to, she’d simply set up Google Alerts on her own name. This meant that she received regular updates from Google, via email, for whenever her name was mentioned in Google News, or in the natural search results.

She liked to keep track of what was being said about her, which is good advice for anyone in the public eye or running their own company. You can set up Google Alerts on your name, or your company name, so that you’re informed of any (more…)

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Filed under: Google, Reputation Management — Written by Cheryl posted on February 2, 2010 at 10:11 am

A guide to bad reputation management

A few weeks ago we discovered something quite disturbing online. It’s disturbing for two reasons: firstly it’s an unethical thing for a company to do and secondly it’s incredibly naïve.

What are we talking about? Reputation management of course.

We found that a company (who we shall not name) employs people to look after their reputation online. Now, this isn’t a bad thing at all. There are ways to look after your online reputation in order to make sure that when people search for your company that they’re not confronted with negative comments. To do this you need to be very skilful, very subtle and subvert the search engines results pages (SERPs) so that you control what people find.

You do NOT do this by going around websites and forums, such as blagger.com and ciao.co.uk, pretending to be satisfied customers of your company and leaving (more…)

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Filed under: Content, Reputation Management, SEO Mistakes — Written by Matt posted on January 2, 2010 at 8:00 am

Jack Thompson commits reputation management suicide

jack-thompson-420-90There are certain ways to deal with websites that are flaming you (intentionally trying to wind you up). One of the ways you do not deal with them is to publically state how annoyed you are about them and try to get them shut down.

Nothing guarantees that word will spread faster like the person being harassed showing that they’re bothered by it, and violent video games campaigner Jack Thompson has just committed Internet suicide by doing just that. Thompson has contacted Facebook (by fax, bless) to have a group removed. The group is entitled ‘Jack Thompson should be smacked across the face with an Atari 2600’ in response to his unsuccessful attempts to get the Grand Theft Auto games band for their violent content.

Now, when Thompson threw his hissy fit and complained to Facebook, this was a modest group with just 312 members (as reported here). After his complaint, the story was reported by the Register, and the group had swelled to (more…)

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Filed under: Facebook, Reputation Management — Written by Carl posted on October 5, 2009 at 8:56 am

Bank error ends with Google deactivation

Last week we reported how Google was once again in court, this time because of the Rocky Mountain Bank who were taking legal action to get Google to reveal the identity of the owner of an email address to which they had mistakenly sent details of 1,325 customers.

In the financial crisis we’re currently in the middle of, this really fills you with confidence in the banks doesn’t it?

In a monumental error, the bank emailed details, including tax ID numbers and loan details, of 1,325 of its customers to someone’s email address; the wrong email address to which they should have been sending something else anyway.

Events like this call for a strong reputation management strategy to minimise the (more…)

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Filed under: Google, Reputation Management — Written by Matt posted on September 29, 2009 at 7:45 am

Thomson discover why reputation management is important

Last week we reported how web designer and blogger Andrew Sharman managed to get an apology and an offer of a partial refund for his holiday from holiday company Thomson after he wrote about his experiences online. Andrew tried to resolve the situation through normal channels, by writing to Thomson’s complaints department, but they never responded to him.

It wasn’t until he wrote on his blog how his holiday wasn’t what he expected and how Thomson had ignored his complaint that he started to get any resolution. It was the fact that his blog ranked highly in Google for search terms relating to Thomson and their holidays to Tunisia that sparked Thomson into contacting Andrew and offering him a partial refund. The idea that other potential customers could be reading about their service and their lack of customer service is what finally forced Thomson’s hand into offering (more…)

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Filed under: Google, Reputation Management — Written by Carl posted on September 19, 2009 at 7:45 am

Sportsdirect.com sells offensive Hillsborough slur shirt

hillsThey say all publicity is good publicity, but that certainly doesn’t apply to Sports Direct at the moment as they’ve been found selling a football shirt that was offensive to the 96 Liverpool fans that died in the Hillsborough stadium disaster.

The news broke as a Man UTD fan posted photos of his new shirt on Facebook, which prompted complaints, his Facebook page to be shut down and Sports Direct to apologise for the insult.

The shirt featured the number 96, representing the 96 fans who died, the acronym YSB (you scouse b******s) and the phrase ‘Not Enough’.

Sports Direct has claimed that when the order for the printing on the shirt was made, their employee didn’t know it was a slur aimed at the Liverpool fans that died at Hillsborough. However, Margaret Aspinall (whose 18 year old son died at Hillsborough) believe Sports Direct knew what they were doing when they (more…)

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Filed under: Facebook, Reputation Management — Written by Cheryl posted on August 22, 2009 at 8:49 am

Reputation Management mistakes from ‘Two and a half Men’

charlie_sheenThis week I was watching an episode of Two and a half Men on the Comedy Channel where a golden rule of reputation management was broken. You don’t often expect to see SEO techniques and reputation management discussed on US sitcoms, but this episode proved an excellent example of what not to do with reputation management.

Charlie Harper, a talented but alcoholic womaniser (played by Charlie Sheen in something of a life role for him) discovered that his attempts to chat up women for one night stands were beginning to fail. He was horrified to find that his targets had already heard his chat up lines and knew of his moves before he made them. This was all due to a website that had been set up warning of the dangers of sleeping with him, called charlieharpersucks.com.

When Charlie Googled his name he found the website at the top of the Google SERPs for the search. The website in question had been set up by one of Charlie’s former conquests and offered the opportunity for other women to (more…)

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Filed under: Reputation Management, SEO Advice, SEO Mistakes — Written by Carl posted on August 7, 2009 at 8:50 am

Google not guilty of indexing defamatory material

google-as-a-giant-robotIf someone posts defamatory material on a website about another person or company, who is responsible for the content?

Is it the person who posted the comments in the first place? Is it the owner of the website for allowing the comments to be posted? Or, as Metropolitan International Schools (Train2Game) tried to claim, is it the search engine for indexing the content?

Metropolitan International Schools took Google to court because Google had indexed content on a website that it believed was defamatory to its brand. It claimed that Google was responsible because snippets of the negative comments were made available in Google’s results pages, meaning that Google itself was republishing the negative comments.

However, a high court judge ruled otherwise, saying that Google was (more…)

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Filed under: Google, Reputation Management — Written by Cheryl posted on July 21, 2009 at 11:07 am
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