Reputation Management Online

When I began my Gordon Brown post yesterday and typed ‘Gordon Brown’, Google, the ever helpful imp that it is, suggested “Gordon Brown bigoted woman”!!! The news had just broke and there it was picked up and urged by Google for all to see.  In a matter of hours the Labour campaign is shaking under the onslaught of this gaffe. Questions are being raised about the character of the PM who is a week-away from election.

This is a great example of how biased Google can be when it comes to negative  news. To illustrate the damning effect, here are two screen shots of both Google.com and Google.uk when you type ‘Gordon Brown’.

This is the kind of damage a negative news can do to your carefully built reputation. Still grabbing headlines and soaring on social networking sites, Gordon Brown will have to face Google’s suggestion horror for quite a few days and with elections a week away this can be a total disaster.

Now, this brings us to what it can do to affect companies that face serious negative issues. There is Google suggesting your worst nightmare to millions of people around the globe. In short, news in any form directly has an effect on Google’s suggested queries.

This is another reason why negative press always seem to have an effect on Google. It’s a vicious cycle and for now Gordon Brown will have to hope for something really big and positive probably in the debates today to stop this negative effect.