Thursday, October 15, 2009<\/p>\n
\n Cross-posted on the \n A few years ago I couldn’t wait to get married. Because I was in love, yeah; but more importantly, \n After a few years of working here, though, I’ve learned that you don’t have to change your name \n The first step in reputation management is preemptive: \n If something you dislike has already been published, the next step is to \n After you or the site’s webmaster has removed or edited the page, you can expedite the removal of \n Sometimes, however, you may not be able to get in touch with a site’s webmaster, or they may You can publish or encourage positive content in a variety of ways:<\/p>\n \n Hope these tips have been helpful! You can stop by our Web Search Forum and
\n Official Google Blog<\/a>
\n <\/i>\n<\/p>\n
\n so that I could take my husband’s name and people would stop getting that ridiculous picture from
\n college as a top result when they searched for me on Google.\n<\/p>\n
\n just because it brings up some embarrassing search results. Below are some tips for “reputation
\n management”: influencing how you’re perceived online, and what information is available relating
\n to you.\n<\/p>\nThink twice<\/h2>\n
\n Think twice before putting your personal information online<\/strong>. Remember that
\n although something might be appropriate for the context in which you’re publishing it, search
\n engines can make it very easy to find that information later, out of context, including by people
\n who don’t normally visit the site where you originally posted it. Translation: don’t assume that
\n just because your mom doesn’t read your blog, she’ll never see that post about the new tattoo
\n you’re hiding from her.\n<\/p>\nTackle it at the source<\/h2>\n
\n try to remove it from the site where it’s appearing<\/strong>. Rather than immediately
\n contacting Google, it’s important to first remove it from the site where it’s being published.
\n Google doesn’t own the Internet; our search results simply reflect what’s already out there on
\n the web. Whether or not the content appears in Google’s search results, people are still going to
\n be able to access it—on the original site, through other search engines, through social
\n networking sites, etc.—if you don’t remove it from the original site. You need to tackle
\n this at the source.\n<\/p>\n\n
\n drop out of search results after we recrawl the page and discover the change.\n <\/li>\n
\n photos you’ve uploaded, or content on your profile page.\n <\/li>\n
\n contact the site’s webmaster<\/a>
\n and ask them to remove the content or the page in question.\n <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n that content from Google using
\n our URL removal tool<\/strong><\/a>.\n<\/p>\nProactively publish information<\/h2>\n
\n refuse to take down the content in question. For example, if someone posts a negative review of
\n your business on a restaurant review or consumer complaint site, that site might not be willing to
\n remove the review. If you can’t get the content removed from the original site, you probably won’t
\n be able to completely remove it from Google’s search results, either. Instead, you can try to
\n reduce its visibility in the search results by
\n proactively publishing useful, positive information<\/strong> about yourself or your
\n business. If you can get stuff that you want<\/em> people to see to outperform the stuff you
\n don’t want them to see, you’ll be able to reduce the amount of harm that that negative or
\n embarrassing content can do to your reputation.\n<\/p>\n\n
\n When people search for your name, Google can display
\n a link to your Google profile in our search results<\/a>
\n and people can click through to see whatever information you choose to publish in your profile.\n <\/li>\n
\n customers who are happy with your company to give a fuller picture of your business.\n <\/li>\n
\n them in a blog post or two.\n <\/li>\n
\n was subsequently ruled in your favor, you can ask them to update the article or publish a
\n follow-up article about your exoneration. (This last one may seem far-fetched, but believe it
\n or not, we’ve gotten multiple requests from people in this situation.)\n <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n share your own advice or stories<\/a>
\n about how you manage your reputation online.\n<\/p>\n