Online Reputation Management Tip – Your Search Engine Optimization Tip of the Day

Many businesses have no doubt come across the problem of having their names, products or services talked about online in an unflattering manner. There’s the usual list of items someone can try in order to remove negative comments which include responding to the negative comment with a possible resolution, petitioning the site owner to have the comment removed or going so far as the take legal action. What if all those measures fail?

There’s something else you can try, something very easy that works extremely well in practice. If you are dealing with dealing with trying to remove a negative comment from a blog or a forum, try this:

Assuming the website or forum is still open to adding additional comments, create a comment of your own, make sure you reply with an image (like a smiley face or personal signature) that is hosted on one of your servers or a server you have access to. Let a few more comments be posted by others and let some time pass, then change out the image on your server with one that is obviously copyrighted or against Google’s TOS. File a report with Google, telling them there’s an indexed page in their SERPs containing illegal content and Google will de-index the page.

You can report the website using this link: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en&pli=1

Is this ethical? Absolutely, in the cases where you are trying to suppress negative comments that are malicious, fabricated, inaccurate or deceptive and after you’ve tried all other methods.

This definitely works and combined with other methods (including a few I’ll keep secret for now), you can eliminate just about any negative reference to your business.