Reputation Management Online

Online reputation management matters a great deal nowadays when people use search engines to learn about you. You may be someone seeking employment, selling a product, looking for an investor or trying to score a date and in today’s world where it all goes online to a great extent, your online reputation does count. There may be Consumers, Business partners, Stock holders, Marketers, Journalists, Prospective employers, Co-workers, Personal contacts etc who try to get info on you online and it’s in this context that you should be beware of the many problems that bug online reputation management. Some of them are:

Squatted usernames:

It should be remembered that along with the age-old problem of domain squatting, username squatting is now becoming a serious issue. There are of course people who squat popular usernames on social networking sites and then when someone who is genuinely in need of that particular username turns up, problems arise.

Squatted domains

Domain squatting or Cybersquatting is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with ulterior motives. If you are really concerned about your online reputation, this could be an issue for you as someone else may be using the your name or the name of your company and doing harm to your reputation.
Doppelgangers : Using your name and appearing like a double of yours could help someone spread malicious opinions about you and cause blemish to your reputation.

Complaint sites

There are many complaint sites and forums, some of them real popular ones, on whom someone who is a detractor of yours can post so-called complaints against you or your company and when this tops search engine searches, things go wrong for you.

Industry perception

If you represent any particular industry, it’s of course very important to watch how you and your company fare in terms of industry perception. It would be advisable to monitor competitor information and industry perception information and do the needful if at all things go wrong.

In addition to these, there are other problems too like Job changes, Name changes, Negative comments, False information, Fake profiles, Trademark infringement, Bad news coverage, Competitor attacks, Hate sites, Personal scandals, Corporate scandals etc. Online reputation management is indeed a very sensitive thing, fragile to a very great extent and has to be handled with care, with extra care in fact.