"Reputation Management" companies manipulate Google search rankings. 2/3 of people don't journey into the second page of a Google search result. Pushing results to the 2nd (or 10th) page is effectively censorship of information.
38 2017-02-12 by NutritionResearch
Massive British PR firm caught on video: "We've got all sorts of dark arts...The ambition is to drown that negative content and make sure that you have positive content online." They discuss techniques for manipulating google results and creating/maintaining 3rd-party blogs that seem independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/caught-on-camera-top-lobbyists-boasting-how-they-influence-the-pm-6272760.html
"It's almost impossible to get [negative] pages taken down, but placing enough positive references above to push them off the first page or two of Google (GOOG) results is where reputation management comes in. But altering search results isn't cheap. Several companies said the typical cost for a small business client starts at $1,000 a month. More extensive services marketed to large corporations run into the tens of thousands of dollars. ReputationDefender, a two-year-old Menlo Park (Calif.) company that mainly markets to individuals, plans to introduce a service for companies that would cost a one-time fee of a few hundred dollars, according to founder Michael Fertik." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-04-30/do-reputation-management-services-work-businessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice
"Instead he uses technology to monitor, for example, what appears on the first page of internet search rankings (it’s only really the first page that matters, as more than two-thirds of users don’t look any further than that). “Then we work in a more traditional way to get stories out there – genuine, new, positive stories – and those will fill the top slots,” he says." https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/oct/30/scandal-company-online-repuation-technology-vw-talktalk
"UC Davis spent thousands to scrub pepper-spray references from Internet" http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article71659992.html
"There is an entire industry dedicated to making bad things on the Internet quietly disappear and making promotional, good things about a person or a company look totally legitimate, even when they're just PR spin. It's known as "reputation management" and those who are good at it can earn $5,000 - $20,000 per month per client. The crux of the work is to trick the search engines, mainly Google, into pushing bad news low in the search results while leaving good news (some of it maybe even fake) up high. It can involve anything from writing positive articles, launching websites to promote those articles, fake reviews, and biased Wikipedia articles, to plastering comments and links on blogs and other sites. Reputation management is used by a wide range of people and companies, from mom-and-pop shops trying to get good reviews on Yelp to celebrities, politicians, lawyers, and even tech giants like Samsung." http://www.businessinsider.com/reputation-management-2013-12
13 comments
n/a controlthruphysics 2017-02-12
So what's the best search engine to use these days?
n/a NutritionResearch 2017-02-12
I'm not sure. I normally use DuckDuckgo, and if that doesn't give me what I want, I type "!G" before the terms I search for on duckduckgo, which brings you to an encrypted google search page. That way, I get to search for stuff without personalized results.
n/a plato_thyself 2017-02-12
I recently heard duckduckgo was bought by yahoo and their results have been manipulated in a similar way as google. Startpage is supposed to be good for privacy, but also just piggybacks on google's architecture. Google is certainly one of the most powerful companies in the world - it can literally rewrite history, and also has a psychological profile on all its users.
n/a NutritionResearch 2017-02-12
Is there a better search engine? Even one that sucks, but gives you results that you don't normally see on Google? I'm trying to find a thread about it, but IIRC, there were a coupe called searx and millionshort or something. I didn't try them yet.
n/a plato_thyself 2017-02-12
wolfram alpha?
n/a TokenHierarchy 2017-02-12
I use DuckDuckGo and search parameters, page 1 is useless unless you want to see the Wikipedia. Definitely internet censorship going on. Quick trick, type - (minus) before an item that you want excluded from your search, go ahead and type all of the spam websites that tend to pop up, for me there are very specific ones that are used to drown out searches related to conspiracy. So I copy, and paste a list of sites I'm tired of scrolling through.
I also advise tor through tails. If you do so, don't even bother if you can't get a signed copy. Also, when you find a good source, get their email, links to their sites etc. because these sites have a tendency to disappear. I have had bookmarks mysteriously vanish from my computer, so don't trust those either. You should also always be using a backup vpn, and be careful about what anti-malware you install as these have a tendency to track you.
The first half of this is aimed at receiving relevant search results, the second half anonymity. If you don't care about anonymity don't bother with that stuff. These are just some really obvious tips, but I advise you don't take anything for granted online.
n/a B12awley 2017-02-12
The most relevant results to your search will be on page one, so if you are looking for very specific things, like articles, of course you are going to have to go past pages one and two. Google is by far the largest engine, so every other engine like Bing and Yahoo bases their rules off of what Google is doing anyway. This is to give their users the best experience and keep them coming back. Saying PR and advertising firms doing SEO is wrong or tricky or something is nonsense. If they can do it, why the hell wouldn't they? And just because something"bad" isn't showing up on page one of everything doesn't mean it's being censored.
n/a NutritionResearch 2017-02-12
If they prevent 2/3 of people from seeing something that they otherwise would have, that is 2/3 censorship.
n/a B12awley 2017-02-12
They only prevent 2/3, which is actually more like 90%+, because people find the things most relevant to their search on page one. They aren't hiding the information or getting rid of it, people just have no need to go further into Google. Also, it can take months to get sites onto page one, and you can't trick google into thinking an article about positive UC Berkeley events should be the most relevant in a search for "UC Berkeley pepper spray."
n/a NutritionResearch 2017-02-12
If they are not hiding anything, why are they doing this? The goal is obviously to prevent the most amount of people from seeing specific links.
You are basically saying that they should be allowed to manipulate google search ranks (or that it's not a big deal) because it's the user's fault if they didn't check the 2nd or 3rd page.
Nobody is claiming that. If you searched "UC Davis," the story about the pepper spray incident was high in the ranks. They don't care about the people who are already aware of it. You wouldn't search "UC Davis pepper spray" if you had no idea the event took place. They want fewer people to become initially aware of it, and it will probably also lower the amount of people who can find the correct link if they heard a rumor about it and wanted to confirm the indecent happened. Many of them probably searched "UC Davis," didn't see anything, then went along their way.
I just checked, and this story is on the first page of results, which is pretty awesome: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article131889779.html
n/a NutritionResearch 2017-02-12
You are very confusing, and I'm not sure you're doing this accidentally. You are saying people don't have a need to go to the second page of google. Okay, I simply disagree. If they are manipulating the search results, then people obviously have a need to go to the second page. You also say "They aren't hiding the information or getting rid of it." Actually, yes they are hiding the information. If people don't have a need to go to the second page, and the link they want is on the second page, then the link they want is effectively hidden. How do you not understand this?
Nobody is claiming that. If you searched "UC Davis," the story about the pepper spray incident was high in the ranks. They don't care about the people who are already aware of it. You wouldn't search "UC Davis pepper spray" if you had no idea the event took place. They want fewer people to become initially aware of it, and it will probably also lower the amount of people who can find the correct link if they heard a rumor about it and wanted to confirm the indecent happened. Many of them probably searched "UC Davis," didn't see anything, then went along their way.
I just googled "UC Davis" from a non-personalized search, and this story is on the first page of results, which is pretty awesome: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article131889779.html
n/a B12awley 2017-02-12
I just don't think I'm explaining my point very well, and I look at SEO or rep management from a business sense and don't see a problem with it.
n/a B12awley 2017-02-12
I guess I'm just not explaining my point very well. I look at SEO and rep management from a business perspective, so I expect this from organizations who want to keep their image clean. It's going to happen one way or another, and in this case Google just allows it.
n/a know_comment 2017-02-12
of course it's "tricky". Google maintains and changes the search algorithm to prevent this type of gaming. Filtering information is essentially an attempt at censorship.
obviously we can't draw an objective conclusion about whether PR is "good or bad", but we are certainly welcome to make a judgement call. And it's good to know that PR firms use tricks like this to game the system.