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Online, you have access to a truly enourmous amount of information. Thanks to search engines like Google, you can find out literally anything about any topic in seconds. This is really beneficial and extremely convenient, of course, but there are also new problems that occur. The problem is that when you have negative information about your company out there on the internet, it is highly likely that search engines like Google will index and rank it, and it will appear when someone searches for your company or name. Unfortunately, it is ridiculously simple and easy for anyone (competitors, customers, ex-employers etc) to seriously damage a companies online reputation that they may have built up. So something had to be done about it.

In response to these problems, many companies and SEO firms came out offering reputation management services. But it’s important to realize that taking information out of search engines is usually impossible, and I guarantee that Google isn’t going to give you much a response if you contact them about it. Many sites that people use to post slanderous material (like ripoffreport and complaintsboard) explicitly state that they do not remove content, ever, under any circumstances. Many people feel that this is ridiculous that they don’t care if users are blatantly making things up and hiding behind a computer screen. So if you can’t take out things like this, then what can you do about it? The way these reputation management companies help you out is by knocking down any pages you don’t want out of the first page of results. That way, the first page of results will only have websites that you want to be there. Searches will still come across the negative pages if they click through the results pages. But studies show the the majority of web users do not look past the first page of results. And by having a lot more results saying good things about your company, it makes it far more likely for customers to feel comfortable doing business with you.

So you probably want to know what companies are worth dealing with. Well, recently I have heard good things about RepSpinner. They are definitely one of the cheapest firms out there, and usually do a very nice job, at least from what I have heard. Simply, easy projects (where there is little competition) can be completed for under a thousand dollars total. But if your project is especially difficult (with a lot of results for your term in Google) then it can take a long time. The best way to do it is to contact as many companies as you can find. Ideally, you want to have a contract where you only pay them once they have finished and achieved what they said they were going to do. You’ll find that most firms will tell you they can’t work under these conditions and that’s because they usually take your money for nothing. The firms that get back to you and agree for you not to pay until they get the results you want are the ones that deserve your business.

By the way, if you are going with RepSpinner, it is worth noting that they have a number of other services related to reputation management. They are very good at doing brand building for new online businesses (this is where a reputation and new pages are built to appear in google).