Why it all matters: the importance of knowing your brand online

The Internet isn’t your friend. It’s not your buddy or your pal. The Internet is a machine that lays in wait for that one moment for you to do something wrong, so it can document that mistake for all time. As more sites race to get their users indexed in search engines, your random comments, your friends’ random comments about you and stuff you did years ago can all come back to haunt you.

I did a recent vanity search (searching your name on Google to see what appears) and I was surprised at the variety of sites I found related to my name. I have a unique name, which means that almost all of my search results related to my online activity. Check -in’s with GoWalla, comments on blogs, Wikipedia entries I’ve edited, blog posts, Twitter comments, reviews I’ve written, Facebook comments, friends’ Facebook comments about me, my activity on GoMiso.com and more all appeared in the search. This has changed a lot from a year ago when did a vanity search. The depth and scope of my online activity is more specific and paints a more interesting and accurate picture of my online movement.

With more sites making their data searchable by Google, Bing and Yahoo, what you do and what your brand does is more transparent than ever. What will clients find when they do a search for your company or your employees? If you’re on the hunt for a new job, when potential employers look you up, what will they find? Oftentimes, you can’t remove an offhand comment or embarrassing moment. 

There isn’t much you can do to remove negative search results, but there are several things you can do to make sure they aren’t ranked high.

SEO - Proper SEO on your websites mean that Google will index more pages on your site and they will rank higher in search results and move negative results further down the list

Ask nicely - Ask the blog or your friend to remove the negative comment about you. If you’ve left a comment on a blog post, odds are you can probably delete that yourself.

File a DMCA takedown notice - If a website is infringing on your trademark or copying your content, you can file a Digital Millennium Copyright takedown notice with the online service provider. Online service providers don’t like confrontation and rather than risk a potential lawsuit, they’ll get the offending material taken down.

Pay them off - This is one of the last methods I would attempt. Once people find out you’re paying to have negative material taken off a website, it opens the floodgates for far more slanderous material to appear.

Threaten a lawsuit - Most people don’t want the hassle and expense of going to court battle. Usually the threat of a lawsuit will be enough to get people to take down material. Again, this can backfire on you. Sometimes of the threat of litigation brings out harsher sentiment and can make your defamer even more aggressive. 

Knowing your online reputation or your brand’s online reputation is becoming increasingly important. As more people are active online and every brand is hanging a shingle up on various websites, knowing how the public sees your online activity and what they’ll find when they look you up is more important than ever. Just like a large corporation, your name is your brand and protecting it should be high on your list of things to do.

What are some of the strange things you’ve found when searching for your name or your company?

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