Company gaming Google search results leads to $2 million in revenue

The immense and growing popularity of Web 2.0 technology has given the general public more power than ever. Generally, Web 2.0 websites are classified as a site that allows more focused user interaction such as comments, user generated content or user submissions. Many ecommerce sites like Amazon.com have Web 2.0 functionality by allowing customer reviews and ratings. The growing user powered features spreading across the Internet have created growing concern for all kinds of businesses like mom and pop shops, eBay stores and major corporations. Customers are now not only able to leave good remarks about businesses, but scathing comments and damaging reviews.

Outside of the business world, average web surfers are also finding rattling implications in their lives due to social networks and more in depth search technologies by companies like Google. It’s becoming commonplace to hear stories of employees being fired from their jobs because of shocking photos and blog posts on their Facebook and MySpace accounts. It’s accepted that when applying for jobs most applicants can expect employers to do some research and digging on social networks and the leading search engine, Google. A recent story on MSNBC, which you can read here, talks about situations where people were turned down for jobs due to their publicly available profiles on sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Google has become such a common household name that during holiday gatherings like Thanksgiving and Christmas, all generations nod their head in understanding when someone says, “Just Google it.” While Googling until one’s heart is content, it may finally become apparent that every once in a while hateful, slanderous or embarrassing information might be out there lurking about you or someone you know. What would you do if a fling from the past leaked a picture of a steamy get together and it was coming up in Google under your name? What would your business do if an angry customer started trolling the message boards telling everyone they could how terrible your service was and making up accusations of fraud? A new service being peddled by search engine optimization experts claims to have a solution.

Googlewashing is being touted as the solution to anyone’s problem whether you’re having personal or business problems with unwanted information in Google. There are reports, mainly on TV news stations, like 9news in Colorado here, being aired that discuss this questionable new business. The way the services work is by charging a fee, typically a monthly fee, to remove negative or damaging information about either you or your company from Google and other search engines. The main sites touting this new service are ReputationHawk.com, DefendMyName.com and ReputationDefender.com. From a news report over at Colorado’s 9news ReputationDefender.com’s owner claims to have made over $2 million dollars removing negative information from search engines.

While Googlewashing is now being sold as online reputation management and brute force public relations, the history of it’s arrival goes back to around 5 years ago. An article published on February 17th, 2003 by Patrick Tyler of the New York Times made a statement, “two superpowers on the planet” referring to the United States and world public opinion. From this phrase a new one was spun into public speeches by the likes of Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general and Greenpeace. The new phrase was, “second superpower.” The phrase started to become a common reference to antiwar opinions. In an attempt to change the public’s view of the term, “second superpower” bloggers from around the world used the term as a hyperlink, linking to an article written by a Harvard Law student. Within 43 days the article by Jim Moore at Harvard Law was ranking #1 on Google for the search term, “second superpower.” This was the birth of Googlewashing.

Googlewashing soon became known as another term commonly known in the search engine world as googlebombing. Googlebombing had many popular occurrences like the “miserable failure” term bringing up the White House biography of George W. Bush as the #1 result. Another popular term, “waffles” brought up a site about John Kerry. Google finally stepped in and changed it’s algorithm to try and combat these problems as announced by the Washington Post in January of 2007 here.

While Google’s prized algorithm fixed many past Google bombs, more are starting to pop up again. Currently you can go to Google and type in, “who is a failure” and a White House page about President George W. Bush comes up #1. You can see an example by clicking here. When it comes down to it, googlewashing and googlebombing were basically the same thing in the past. More recently, googlewashing has taken a turn of duplicating original content on the Internet to try and confuse the search engines as to which piece was the original. The result is duplicate copies ranking and original copies of information being pulled from the Google search index or ranking much lower than the duplicates. It’s with these methods that the new business of googlewashing has sprung up from.

With businesses and people vulnerable to the flood of social contributions whether it be words, pictures or video companies have found a way to use past tactics to presumably help people restore their reputations. With the leaders in the industry claiming to have made $2 million gaming Google’s search engine, it’s nothing to take lightly. This is clearly a business that won’t be going away soon. One of the leaders in the industry states on it’s site that while they will remove information for anyone, they still support the First Amendment and the Freedom of Speech. Directly from their website they put it like this, “a strong supporter of the freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Our correction/removal (”Destroy”) service was designed to help private citizens regain control over unintentionally posted or outdated personal information accidentally disclosed to the public Internet, and address potentially libelous, slanderous, defamatory or invasive information about them that serves no public benefit.”

The interesting part about that exact statement is it’s really in the eye of the beholder as to what is truly information that serves no public benefit. The game of cat and mouse is on and for now, Google is on the defense.