Reputation Management

User Generated Content Can Get You Penalized

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April 29  |  Link Building, Reputation Management  |   Alex Chan

User Generated Content Can Get You Penalized

Mozilla was manually penalized by Google this week for having tons of user generated spam on its website. User-generated spam usually appears on websites that have forums, guestbook pages etc. But in this case, it turned out it was not entirely Mozilla’s fault. Prior to a few days ago, searching for “site:mozilla.org cheap payday seo” would have yielding pages of spammy forum posts.

After receiving a notification from Google stating that it has applied manual spam action against them, Chris More, Mozilla’s Web Production Manager, immediately started repairing the problem. It turned out to be difficult as he could not find the reason for which Mozilla was being penalized. He stated that he could not find nor detect any spam content on www.mozilla.org. Since Google was not willing to be more precise regarding the spam, Mozilla could not remove the spam in question.

Google has often discussed the idea of being more transparent when handling spam actions, but that has not happened yet. Such idea was quickly turned down since Google does not want to give spammers pointers where they did wrong. This creates a very big problem for domains since they get penalized for something they did not know existed in the first place.

Manual penalties, unlike algorithmic penalties, are easier to handle. You detect the spam on the website, delete it, and send a reconsideration request to Google about your actions. But the problem with undetectable user-generated spam is that people usually do not know what to fix and what to send a reconsideration request for. Here’s the catch! By sending a reconsideration request, a website can ask Google to point out the user-generated spam. This procedure might take a couple of weeks, but it will rectify all the problems that have occurred on the way.

So to all webmasters, carefully monitoring your websites and police your user generated content. That seems to be the best defense against all the spammers out there.

Reputation Management Case And Lesson Learned

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November 28  |  Reputation Management  |   Ryan Clark

I was browsing the SEO section of Reddit today and came across a really interesting, and real world example of why you’ll eventually need reputation management. There are a lot of ways of going about it, but when it comes to out ranking some solid SERPs, you’re going to need some solid links. This case as rather interesting and more personal than corporate, but the results will drastically effect this person’s credibility if searched for. Imagine your future employer finding out something you’d never want them to see…it’s not a fun situation and by the sounds of it this guys is going to have some work cut out for him.

The problem is that a close friend of mine had an incident a couple of years ago. He went through a real nasty divorce which went through court and it really took it’s toll on him. One time during the court hearings he failed to show up and the judge convicted him on contempt of court. So he got arrested and was brought to the hearing. A mugshot was taken.

Now a couple of years ago the state he resides in made all arrest records public and websites like mugshot.com started to sprout. Now when you google his name the mugshot is usually the #1 or #2 link.

I do realize he made a mistake by not showing up, but that’s a different story. I have tried everything I can think of to try and make websites/profiles/blogs with his name but the mugshot site is always on Page 1 on Google. Other search engines (Yahoo and sometimes Bing) aren’t a problem, they show his mugshot profile on page 2-3.

You can ask the website to remove the mugshot but it’s really expensive because the site basically charges lawyer fees for it. Do you guys have any ideas or is this a lost fight? What I’m trying to accomplish is to move the mugshot website to maybe page 2-3 on Google.

Not a happy place! See original thread here.

The options for removal are up to you, and you can pay to have it removed from Mugshots.com. It’s a really dirty business in my opinion but all is fair in business and war. The OP got a handful of advice, some solid and some questionable so you really have to be careful in how you proceed in a situation like this. If you’re in a bind, then just paying to have something like this removed is worth the effort. For the rest of us, a little link building and leveraging authoritative social networks should do the trick.

We had a similar situation with a CEO of a company needing to get a certain results pushed off the first couple of pages in Google. For us, we utilised his personal blog, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Scribd, Youtube, Pinterest and other sites to build a strong network of profiles. In a case like with Mugshots.com, they have a weak link profile so it shouldn’t take too much work to over run it. Take note of what social platforms are ranking well and make good use of them. Properly done profiles will go a long way, and interlink where you can to juice the others you’re building up. Make sure each profile has a lot of unique content…I cannot stress this enough.

What tips do our readers have for the rest of us, I want to hear below!

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BBC Does Reputation Management Right!

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February 7  |  Reputation Management  |   Ryan Clark

I’m loving this topic and the amount of real world examples I can showcase here are endless. I really appreciate big brands who get their hands dirty and respond to either true or false statements made against them in the real “social” world. I was sitting down this morning @Starbucks, doing my morning blog trolling and came across a very interesting topic. The post by Sam Rutley over at PushON, an awesome example of link bait, titled “Paid Links On The BBC?” has gone from bad to good for the BBC.

Whilst carrying out competitor backlink analysis for a client I noticed a number of high value links pointing from the BBC website, after further investigation it appears that the BBC/someone at the BBC is may be selling links in the footer of this page: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tv_and_radio/default.stm.

This is a serious accusation for any small or big brand to see come across their stream, but sadly you usually won’t find anyone responding. A company like the BBC has a huge number of websites within their umbrella, so I was overly impressed to see the BBC Sports webmaster, Lewis Wiltshire, respond intelligently and thoughtfully to the accusations.

The key to handling something like this is of course to be to the point, non confrontational because you’re representing your brand. The BBC should be thankful for having someone like this on their team, especially since reputation management is not Lewis’s job at all….the man is a sports editor!

The links in question are editorial, and the fact a site like that would link to interesting sites in the niche is awesome. While the links didn’t look “iffy” to me, I can see how Sam and other SEO’s might speculate that they were indeed evil paid links.

I don’t want to dupe too much of Sam’s content, but here’s the gist of what Lewis replied with in the comments;

I’m Lewis Wiltshire, the Editor of the BBC Sport website and therefore responsible for the pages you mention.

The first issue to deal with is the question you raise in your headline, and then again in your closing paragraphs. To suggest that the BBC sells these links to external websites, which as you rightly say would be against the BBC’s charter, is clearly a very serious allegation. It’s also totally untrue.

None of the links to external websites from the BBC’s UK-facing website are sold. All of them are editorially selected because we believe they offer useful onward reading for our audience.

It’s part of our public service remit to link to other websites, partly for the benefit of the industry and partly for the benefit of our users who trust us to lead them towards useful services on the wider web.

There’s a lot more discussion in the post and I highly recommend reading of all it, taking it in and learning a thing or two.

Read the entire post: http://blog.pushon.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation-seo/paid-links-on-the-bbc/

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Outdoor Adventures Whistler & Howling Dog Tours: Reputation Management Nightmare

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February 1  |  Reputation Management  |   Ryan Clark

There is a hot new topic going around about the slaughtering of around 100 sled dogs in Whistler BC. While everyone is currently calling on a full out Boycott of Adventures Tours Whistler, they’re saying they had sold the dogs to Howling Dog Tours of Whistler BC. Howling Dog Tours has already place the blame on some other bloke who is supposedly the killer of all those cute puppies. While it’s almost too late for them to recover in the next few years, it sure makes for an interesting reputation management post. Regardless of this, living in Whistler BC is still one of the best spots in North America!

The quickness of social media, and the power of viral marketing has currently spawned boycotts of the companies, endless blog posts and REALLY bad looking press. If you search for both companies in Google, you’ll see a plethora of news posts ranking right below regarding the dog slaughtering. This is going to hurt them big time no matter what they do, and even if they didn’t kill a single dog. This is a VERY important lesson to be learned because one slip up can bring your company to its knees. It’s too bad the same didn’t happen for some Wall Street firms I remain to not name…

So you wanna see just how badly this is effecting them within 24 hours of the news coming out? Sure you do! I can only imagine this is going to get worse before it gets better, but at least Adventure Tours has already got a press release fired off and ranking in the top 10. Howling Dog Tours has put up a statement on their website to tame the angry visitors, but I’d expect this not to relent for some time to come. Lets take a look at Twitter and Google, and when you look at these results, put yourself in the mind of a potential customer.


Outdoor Adventures:

and


Howling Dog Tours:

All I can say is I hope the person responsible for the dog shootings gets some jail time or a huge fine, and that the future social media director for any of the companies gets a big paycheck. So keep in mind the next time you’re thinking of doing something stupid, illegal or shady with your company that you remember this post.

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