Reputation protection and management are indeed crucial aspects of building your credibility. Because anyone can post anything to any number of complaint boards, fraud alert boards, or to the web in general, unless we have never been alive, someone has been angered with us over something which we have said or done -- whether baseless or absolutely true. Some are matters of opinion and some are matters of documented fact.
Many online credibility management or social media "cleanup" services have recently sprung up to combat the increasing problem of getting negative news (posted on the web for all to see) by either persons you've wronged, persons who just don't like you, or personal details about your divorces, regulatory issues, multiple bankruptcies, business failures, table manners, misdemeanors, felonies, arrests, time in a sanitarium, firings and dismissals, censures, license revocations, affiliations, rotten posts which you later regretted after placing them on FaceBook and other social media, your pending foreclosure, pictures of you with a lampshade over your head at an office party, personal telephone and residence information, sealed court records (incidentally, nothing is ever actually either sealed or is actually inaccessible for an assiduous muckraker) consumer complaints either 1) off of the the major search engines (particularly Google), or 2) "buried" deep in the bowels of the search engines (i.e., the 59th page in Google) where no "normal" person would have the time or patience to look.
There is actually no good news here, folks. There are no panaceas. No "black hat" hackery/ crackery or quackery tools or cleanup squads available... even powerful governments have been caught in massive lies, coverups and political scandals -- WikiLeaks, anyone? There is some useful information which can help to minimize or mitigate the effects upon you and your career by these pesky postings that befoul your otherwise exemplary search engine reports.
1) If someone has posted something that is a matter or published fact or public record, don't even bother trying to delete it or remove it, unless it is a civil matter which has subsequently been legally settled, paid, satisfied, rescinded, vacated, dismissed, released or otherwise satisfied with a court-stamped or other evidentiary agreement. If this is the case, the cheap fix is to publish the document evidencing the satisfaction. The better fix might be to retain a professional firm, as referenced above to have the posting party issue a publicly-posted rescission.
2) If there was a regulatory investigation, whether dropped, or prosecuted, it will not be expunged. Don't waste a minute. Don't try to eliminate facts. Be prepared to briefly explain them (denials are invariably perceived as admissions of even greater guilt and wrongdoing) only if asked and don't offer apologies or feeble, wishy-washy discussions about mitigating circumstances. Stay in command, and never assume a defensive posture. Remember -- whatever happened in the past is done. Right or wrong, it is now merely a piece of history. Let it strengthen you, or even have a third party spin it in your favor.
When a corporate executive and aspiring statesman was asked (as in an "Is it true that...?" open question-style confrontation) by a reporter at a press conference about a previous felony conviction (from some years prior), the executive (after waiting for a hush from the crowd of reporters, and signaling them to be quiet), simply said, without, engaging the reporter, something to the effect of, "Yes. That is absolutely true. It was a troublesome thing. Now, ladies and gentlemen of the press, if you don't mind, I'd like to avoid wasting any further of your valuable time and get back to the matter that needs to be addressed immediately. I'll continue, but I will insist that we keep the nature of this conference relevant and highly-focused. I have limited time, as we all do, and a business to run. Thank you."
That "Thank you," was fully and deafeningly dismissive.
3) Do not waste a minute of time or a penny seeking legal relief for defamation of character;
4) Do not engage the other party by any inflammatory response.
5) The best of the professional services will either 1) legally seek to have incorrect factual information corrected or removed, or what they will do is use some SEO chicanery to "stuff" the search engines with all manner of articles related to all manner of possible search engine queries which speak of you or your business in glowing terms.
Having said all of this, the best advice that a leader who has chosen to be successful is to avoid wasting too much time with off-target problem solving, lest you fail to conserve adequate time to invest in pursuing growth opportunities.
Douglas E. Castle [http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/douglascastle] and the Taking Command! Blog.
Never, ever let defensiveness or desperation be a motivating force for your decisions or actions. Leaders and commanders are permitted to err. The idea is to keep your Achille's heel (which each have one or more) out of a bear trap, and to keep from letting emotion turn the present path of progress into a detour into the woods. Stay in control, and never exhibit submissiveness. Nobody said that it would be easy.
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