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I was reading an article last week which I would love to reference here, but I have been unable to find where I had read it. It was in an actual print magazine and not online. The article featured a new “Brand Identity” company that helped both companies and individuals “clean up” their names on the internet. They interviewed the CEO and he spoke a whole lot of mumbo jumbo to make his job and what his company does sound real important.
Let me walk you through what they do and I will use myself as an example. Let’s say you would do a search in Google using my name Cord Silverstein. The search results are pretty basic. The first page has links to this site, my profile pages on MyBlogLog and LinkedIn as well as a link to the company I work for. As I said pretty standard stuff.
BUT, what if when you did that same search using my name and you would see this?!?!?!?!?
Oh my!! Look what the internet is saying about me! That’s some terrible stuff. What in the world am I going to do?
No worries because this brand identity company will come to my rescue. While charging their clients $10,000 a month, they will go out and register dozens and dozens of domain names with my name in it. For example:
- cordsilverstein.com
- cord-silverstein.com
- cord-silverstein-likes-puppies.com
- cord-silverstein-humanitarian.com
- cord-silverstein-american.com
- cord-silverstein-red-white-and-blue.com
- cord-silverstein-school-marm.com
You get the idea. After purchasing these domains, the company will build web sites for all these domains. The sites will be basic HTML sites and filled with absolutely useless content, but there will be a whole lot of it! (wink) While building all these content pages, the company will also go out and register these sites with every damn directory they can find to hopefully get a nice bunch of links pointing to each one of these sites.
Now if all goes well and after this company has sucked as much money out of me as possible, hopefully, the search engines will start placing these web sites in the top of the natural search results since my name is in all of the domain names. And if that happens, all those really mean posts about me will be pushed down to page six, seven, etc. And then the company will pat themselves on the back for yet another job done incredibly well! Hurray….
Here’s the question of the day. Is this anything else other than total and unadulterated spam? Are they gaming the search engines to hide the results they do not want to be seen? Or do you feel this is acceptable since the internet never forgets and this is an option for someone or a company to try to clean up their names via the search engines?
The best answer will have the opportunity to take my place as backup singer on the next Bee Gees world tour.*
* Not only is Cord not a backup singer for the Bee Gees, but the Bee Gees would not have him even if he begged with the voice he has. So in other words, there is no prize and Cord was trying, and we emphasize the word trying, to be funny.
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Technorati Tags: Brand Identity, Google, spam, Bee Gees
Its good to see that you are a registered Republican and Nazi. I don’t know how you pulled that off, but Ann Coulter would be proud.
I say it’s completely spam.
On the other hand, I also say if people are willing to be robbed of their money for something of that caliber- might as well allow it The money will be better used in circulation than their pocket. Granted, the next pocket it enters into isn’t the greatest either.
I suppose the question is how many people go beyond the first page in Google’s search? I imagine after a few pages in, you’d just see all that crap again. Then you just blew a couple thousand dollars on nothing.
Maybe not singing… but how are your drumming skills?
Since many are able to extort money on fear, a really good professional does not want to see his or her name connected to trash. This in fact is a form of blackmail over and above spam! I hope such enterprises are soon put in their place! Thanks for alerting us all to this, Cord.
By the way, the BeeGees are my favorite group. If you can sing with them - why not make a video and put it on your site?????
$10,000 per month!? Yikes!
Nathan - I agree with you that it is spam, but let me play devil’s advocate for a second. Let’s say someone has had some terrible stuff written about them that is not true or they are trying to turn over a new leaf. Is there any other recourse to trying to clean up a person or company’s name than this?
Let me know what you think. Thanks for your thoughts.
Oh by the way, my drumming sucks as well.
Robyn - Thanks for your comment. I would love to put a video of me singing here Robyn, but it is pretty much guaranteed that I would lose all readers immediately.
Thanks again!
Cam - Yup, 10K is what they said in the article. What do you think, you want to go into that business? You and me open a company, Cam & Cord Inc. Maybe C&C?
The great thing is we’d only need to find something like 20 customers in the first year.
I know it! We could go out and find the most hated and reviled people and companies on the internet today and target them. I am seeing huge cash!!
It’s really expensive spam, but it’s also very effective reputation management (assuming they’re any good).
And bear in mind, it’s not like they’re spamming for anything that’s going to annoy you - they’re just making sure you read someone’s propaganda about themselves.
Making sure those ego searches are ego-tastic. And that anyone else will see the same.
$10,000 per month!? The money does matter
The ridiculous part, is anyone who’s looking for the “dirt” will likely find it anyway.