Sometimes, for some people, and for whatever reason, there may be a web page listing on the search engines for your name that you’d rather not be there. While you are unlikely to be able to have it removed, there is action you can take to bury the offending link buried further down the search engines.
For most people this will be a strange idea, but for some it’s good to know that there are things you can do yourself.
So – how do you go about this.
The most immediate activity is to register with social media and networking websites. Most of these will list your profile page on the search engines, and of course any additional activity bringing attention to those profiles will help.
Visit the following, join and create your profile on each:
- Business Scene
- MySpace
- BT Tradespace
- Ecademy
- The Results Academy
- FastPitch Networking
- UK Business Forum
- SocialMedian
- UK Business Labs
- Qassia
- workology
- network2connect
- Connect Buzz
- Business Directory UK
- Business Balls
- Naymz
- Spock
- Twellow
- 4networking
- Swapaskill
- Freeindex
- wwwi
- Classmates
- Friends Reunited
- Plaxo
- Sonico
- Digg
- Blogspot
- Squidoo
This is indeed a motley selection, and there will be many more that you can make use of – some may even be useful in other ways, some more relevant to you, and of course you can do a search for people you know to see what results are useful for you to consider.
If you have any articles to submit, use those on the above and on other article submission sites such as www.articlefeedster.com and www.articlehot.com – and then of course get your buddies to stumble, digg and generally bring you more attention (more on this later in the month).
If you don’t want or need to create your own blog, perhaps consider a Squidoo lens instead – go and have a look to see if it suits you – and it would be another recent addition to your own search placement.
Enough for now – let me know how you get on, of your suggestions, and if you want to know more.
Good luck
This is interesting – and I hadn’t even thought about the potential need for Reputation Management in this way. I thought that if you just ‘kept your nose clean’ and behaved in a responsible manner, that’s all there was to it!
So now I have a question:
Is just registering (and possibly putting a profile up)on some or all of the sites you’ve listed enough to do a damage limitation job or would you have to then be regularly active?
Linda
Thanks for your question, Linda
How continually active you need to be is partly going to depend on how active the offending web page is likely to be. If it’s just a static page of information from a set period of time, then if you, in effect, create more recent pages, which get some attention, these are most likely to remain higher than the older, static page.
Of course some of the sites listed are likely to be useful anyway, so will warrant your regular attention.
Now if more aggressive action is needed for one’s online reputation repair, I recommend talking to people and agencies that can take care of it for you, such as Nikki Pilkington (who does provide this service) and Tiger Two
If anyone wants to ask something in confidence, do feel free and I’ll advise as best I can.
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Great list Babs, wish I had seen this before today!