2009 February, 17th

Mihaela Lica

MediaPost reported today that Google SearchWiki Puts Strain On Reputation Management – and that because of tools like Google SearchWiki lawsuits claiming defamation of character will continue to rise.

Managing online reputations is one of the most challenging tasks a public relations company could face today, although the trend leans more to SEOs dealing with reputation management. There’s a good reason for this: SEOs know how to manipulate the search results to bury defamatory content, but they don’t necessary know how to remove infringing content from the Web.

In most cases taking down defamatory content is impossible – many companies who offer the “rating and opinion” services online deny inquiries to “take down” content, because, they say, the users have the right to an opinion. In all honesty, if a user says that your company sucks he must have a reason, but the problem is that the user will not always make public the reason. For a company’s reputation to be damaged online it’s enough to place the name of its brand near a noise word like “sucks” and to add such comments to a few popular blogs, and social networks.

The problem with SearchWiki is that derogatory comments can now appear directly associated with a business listing responding to a search query. With SearchWiki comments are associated with one Google account, nickname and computer IP, however this will not stop the spammers who are smart enough to get hundreds of IP addresses, email accounts and to make even more negative, defamatory comments for any reason under the sun: because they can, because they are frustrated with a job/person etc.

Image Credit ReadWriteWeb

For Google this is not a big issue, but for companies that already feel the effects of so much online “liberty” this is more than big. Google assumes no responsibility for users who write defamatory comments on SearchWiki – the Communications Decency Act Section 320 gives businesses immunity for content on their site that they did not create.

The conclusion might be that Google gives your enemies the tools to bury your brand under a pile of trash.

• 2010/08/30 -- PayPal and Slide Co-Founder Max Levchin Joins Google’s Ranks
• 2010/07/20 -- New Reputation Monitoring Service Launched – SMR by Yomego
• 2010/05/30 -- Procter and Gamble’s Online Marriage, A Pitiful Engagement
• 2010/04/02 -- First Topeka, Then Granite State of Mind, The World Goes Google
• 2010/02/24 -- Sync Yourself to Control Your Brand’s Reputation
• 2010/01/29 -- Small Business, Big PR
• 2010/01/19 -- Is Social Media Transforming PR?

About the Author

Mihaela Lica is senior partner at Pamil Visions PR and editor at Everything PR. She is a widely cited authority on search engine optimization and public relations issues (BBC News, Force for Good, Reuters and others), with an experience of over 8 years in online PR. Mihaela writes occasionally for SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, and other online publications. Follow Mig on Twitter or send her an email at mig [at] pamil-visions [dot] com.

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