All about reputation management

Learn about what reputation is, how to manage reputation, defamation, online reviews, prices for online reputation management services, Wikipedia editing and eligibility, and how to remove online content below. 

• What is reputation?

  Reputation is the subjective, qualitative belief a person has in a brand, a person, a service, or other entity. In people, reputation is different than character. Character is an intrinsic value, but reputation is an opinion.

  Today, search results are the "middle-man" between the true character of an entity and how it is perceived - reputation.

  Online reputation management services work to improve how search engines reflect the reputation of brands, whether people, companies, or something else. Learn more about what reputation is here.

• What is reputation management?

  Reputation is how a brand is seen. Reputation management works to improve what people see about a brand – mainly online.

  Reputation management is improved by engineering content, ratings, reviews, and more. It includes promoting positive content, and working to demote (reduce or eliminate) the visibility of negative content. A brand reputation can apply to a person, company, product, service, or even a political entity. Find out more about what reputation management is here.

• What is defamation?

  Defamation and libel are often confused. Defamation is when someone's words or other content cause damage to a person or brand. Libel is when those words are written down. Slander is when those words are spoken. Both libel and slander are methods of causing defamation. Want to learn more about defamation? Click here.  

• How can online reviews be improved?

  Online reviews can be improved by improving products, services, or the way customer service deals with issues. While this approach generally works to decrease the number of negative reviews, a more proactive approach to improving reviews and star-ratings on sites like Yelp, Google Reviews, and others needs to be taken. Reputation X uses an approach to improve reviews that differ from industry to industry. In some cases a gated review approach may be taken to vet reviewers before asking them to leave a review, for others gating is not necessary. In any case, reviews are improved almost 100% of the time. To learn more about improving online reviews, click here. 

• How much does reputation management cost?

  Reputation management costs between $4,000 one time, and $10,000 or more per month. The price range of an online reputation program varies widely based on factors and depends on the desired outcome. It may include Wikipedia management, ratings and reviews, promotion of positive content, development of new content, removal of content from websites or search engines, and many other things. Every reputation management campaign is different, and costs vary significantly. To get a quick estimate about online reputation management pricing click here. 

• How long does reputation management take?

  Some changes to search results, like removing a page, can happen in only a few days. Other forms of reputation management can take weeks or even years. The time it takes to change search results varies depending on a number of factors. For example, a typical campaign to improve online reviews may begin to bear fruit in only a week or two and continue to result in better reviews and ratings over time. But the time it takes to push search results down for a negative Wall Street Journal article for a financial services firm may require many months. Campaigns in languages other than English have their own timelines. To find out more about how long it takes to change Google or other search results see this article. 

• Are you eligible for a Wikipedia page?

  At its core, Wikipedia strives for reliability. Are there articles written about your brand or about you? A Wikipedia page about a person requires the person be notable. Many people and brands believe they are notable enough, but aren't.

  An article where you are just mentioned or quoted isn't usually good enough. Articles about you need to be *about* you as the main subject. This type of article could be an interview, a biography, or an article by a reasonably well-known author.

  Here are two guidelines:

  1. Is your brand name (or your name) in the title of the article?
  2. Is the article on a site most people have heard of?

  Learn more about Wikipedia article eligibility here. 

• How can online content be deleted?

  Google results are permanent, right? Well, not always. So, how do you get something removed from Google? There are five ways to remove content from Google search - or to effectively remove it. Content removal can be a tricky thing, but this guide should help. 

  There are seven ways to remove online content from search:

  1. Ask people to delete their content
  2. Remove content at the publisher level
  3. Ask people to change their content
  4. Make a page invisible to Google
  5. Google removal
  6. Suppress visibility     
  7. Removing negative reviews