Following my post on McDonald’s search engine reputation management and image issues, a similar issue has arisen with a personality: Michelle Obama.

When you are looking for ‘Michelle Obama’ on Google Images the first result is a picture of her looking like a monkey or ape. It is obviously a racist and offensive image.

Michelle Obama on Google Images

The official comment from Google is:

“Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it.”

This is the official answer to deter companies and individuals from complaining about every negative result relevant to their brands or name. Google has been sued many times and is always successful in these cases on the basis that they use an algorithm and the search results are not a choice.

In this case I am pretty sure that they will make an exception, I don’t see the White house doing a SERM campaign.

Anyway, this example once again illustrates how important is to manage your search engine reputation, not only the web result but all kind of result (image, video …).

This is one of the first times that Google has officially spoken about search engine reputation management via its blog. It is probably because they have increased demand from businesses/users to remove negative results…

SERM was been big topic foe at least 4 years now… and is getting very important for most of the users to have a clear search reputation.

Google advise you to remove all the content that can be negative if you own the content or ask the people who posted the negative content to remove it. These advice provided by Google is pretty simple but good common sense.

Probably good advice if you are a simple user and a few of your friends posted some stupid pictures of you but if you are a business it would be a lot harder to remove the negative content.

Anyway, it is still interesting to see that search engine reputation (SERM) has become one very big subject.

Most of the search engine reputation management (SERM) issues exist because people are unhappy with the brand or the company has some negative news (strikes, delays, redundancies…).

When I was looking for Louis Vuitton on Google UK, the results page wasn’t what I was expected. There were no negative results about the brand but there were some ‘affiliate websites’ which sell Louis Vuitton hand bags. So far nothing wrong, but when I had a closer look at these websites I realised that all of them are selling replicas! Probably some website hosted in China or another country where is difficult for Louis Vuitton to close them.

Louis Vuitton Google Result Page

I am pretty sure that Louis Vuitton is spending a lot of money on legal action but doing nothing online regarding this issue. I am not sure that it is the right move…

This is why Louis Vuitton should set-up a search engine reputation management (SERM) campaign. Technically, they have to push down the replica websites on Google results page and it would be a lot more difficult for the people who are just looking for the brand to find these websites.

With this strategy they could possibly damage these websites more quickly than through lengthy legal actions…

This just goes to show how SERM can be used for different and unexpected situations.

 Yesterday a UK court judged the case of Metropolitan International Schools Limited against Google. The school was unhappy that the Google results page displays some negative results when the school is searched for.

It is a typical case of SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management). Many other companies are dealing with this issue but very few are going to court anymore because France, Italy and previously Netherland courts did not find Google at fault.

The outcome of the trial was similar to previous ones. Google cannot be guilty as under UK law a search engine is not a ’publisher’ because everything is automatic and it doesn’t pick the content that is displayed.

The judge said that the companies should blame the actual writer/publisher of the negatives articles instead of the search engine, which just indexing the content on the net.

Personally I think that it is a just and fair comment. Google is just a tool/computer…if you have any issues with a search engine results page just do some SEO and contact the people who write negative articles in order to find out why they have been posted and if they can be removed. After do some SERM if there is no  possible negotition with them.

Most of you know the classic search engine reputation management (SERM) format which makes sure that the ten first results (first page) on the search engine result page are neutral or positive.

Ordinarily search engine reputation management is for brand terms such as ‘Nike’, ‘RBS bank ’, and ‘AXA Insurance’…

A lot of companies look at the first page of Google and try to control the ten first results with other corporate and social media websites. Below we can see that McDonald’s did a pretty good job managing the first Google results page.

Google Result Page - Mc Donald's

The majority of these companies don’t ever look at search engine image result page where some malicious picture can be posted against them.

As far as I am aware there is no tool that can monitor the Google search image result page. It has been so far disregarded by search engine reputation management professional/ companies.

It is why some of the largest companies have some negative image result and it doesn’t look like they do anything about it or even that they are aware of it.

SERM - Mc Donald's Search Image Result Page

The worst thing is that it is easier to clear/manage your search image result page that your actual search engine result page (web result). With few SEO tricks on images, you can manage the problem in a couple of weeks.

Maybe a new product to develop

The new function of Google which was implemented a few days ago (please see my previous post: Google Suggest) raises new questions and issues for companies.

How does Google suggest the relevant keywords and how can we update Google’s suggestions are the two questions most asked.

Google suggests relevant keywords based on the number of searches across an expansive period of time. As, Google Suggest is not updated frequently enough to keep up with the latest trends (e.g. Bing is not part of Google Suggest).

Sometimes the opposite happens, Google will suggest some old trends to the user when actually nobody (based on Google trends) is still looking for these keywords (e.g.: ‘Sarkozy Drunk’ or ‘Obama Special Olympics’).

Google Suggest - Sarkozy

Google Suggest - Obama

This is where a search engine reputation management (SERM) problem arises. Even when the incident is gone from the average searchers memory, Google does not forget, even if it is few months ago.

The only solution to update Google Suggest is to create new trends relevant to the topic and wait few months. Not very efficient, but it is unfortunately the only option.

Wikipedia is the largest free online encyclopedia with over 12 million pages. It is funded by donations and volunteers (‘admins’) ensure the accuracy of the pages.

A few months ago a young Irish student from Dublin (Shane Fitzgerald) posted a fake poetic quote on the Maurice Jarre Wikipedia page following his death. Some newspapers (including the Guardian) used Shane’s quote in articles on the passing of the musician.

Maurice Jarre Wikipedia

Obviously some journalists did not check the accuracy and the source of the quote. However,Shane Fitzgerald’s experiment has sparked a debate about the accuracy and monitoring of Wikipedia.

Most people know that Wikipedia is not 100% correct all of the time but nevertheless it is regarded as a trustworthy source. It is easy to overlook the fact that it is still very easy to put pretty much whatever you want on it.

It is even easier when you have an auto-approve user login (once 10 of your modifications have been approved). All you have to do is to write something plausible on one of the less popular Wikipedia pages and here we go!

I tried this experiment for you using my boss (Maurice Lévy)! I added :‘Maurice Lévy is also famous for his quote ‘Viva la différence’ which is now the tagline of Publicis Group.’ to his Wikipedia page.

This statement is totally incorrect but plausible. In two minutes I have changed a Wikipedia page… now lets see how long this statement will stay on Wikipedia.

Maurice Levis Wikipedia

Fake Quote Wikipedia

This example shows how is easy to modify for at least a few minutes/hours a Wikipedia page and if you target the right page at the right moment you can do some damage!

Wikipedia is still a nice and useful tool but do be careful to double check the facts.