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.

SERM, Search Engine No Comments July 22nd, 2009

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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

SERM 3 Comments July 1st, 2009

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’).

 

 

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.

SERM 1 Comment June 10th, 2009

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