Because what get indexed is not always what you like…
While most of the time during your online experience your goal will be to get content and information about you and your business published and indexed, it will come some days or situations where some information with a negative impact on your business may found its place in the search engines results.
Today’s post is aimed at helping you deal with bad content or content who could have a negative impact on your overall online business or presence online, be it a bad review or outright uncalled criticism…
Be Cautious As To What You Disclose
This may sounds overly obvious, but the very first step is to protect your privacy and make sure that you are very careful as to what kind of information you disclose on your site (or third party site).
Ask yourself if such information could affect your privacy or being used in a negative way that could potentially harm your business before releasing it.
Internet made it very easy to find information and luckily (most of the time) search engines are more and more skillful when it comes to finding new content on internet…
So even if you haven’t submitted your private story to any search engines or given the link to anyone, this doesn’t mean that someone may not have the chance to get access to this information.
Get At The Root Of The Problem
Assuming that it’s already too late, and the negative content is already published and possibly indexed in the search engines, the very first step you should take is to find the source of this content and remove it from there.
If the content is posted on your site or a site you have access to, simply remove the content yourself. As the content will be refreshed during the next crawling by the search engine and the cache updated, the bad content will automatically be dropped.
If the content (such as medias and photos) are posted on a third party site (Facebook, YouTube, etc…) that you have access to, while you don’t own the site, you should be able to remove the unwanted pictures yourself.
Now, assuming that you have not direct access to the source of the content or you are not the owner of the site publishing it, you should contact the webmaster of the said site and request the change to be made.
Balance Negative With Positive
Because things don’t always work the way we want, often you’ll come across situation where the webmaster will refuse to remove the content in question.
Their attitude is not always despicable and they may have a valid reason to think or decide not to do so.
Now, that being said, if you are the victim of this bad review or negative story your best alternative is then to camouflage this bad in the middle of a lot of good.
Be proactive and start to publish and have a lot more positive stories and comments to be indexed alongside this bad comment and preferably even outrank it in the search engines in such way that it became almost invisible.
So rather than being stuck with 1 bad review about your services in the search engines dramatically affecting your business, if you can add to it 9 positive reviews, people will quickly forget about the bad one, or even consider it a forged one.
In Conclusion
No one likes to see bad things about them, and even less if it makes it in the top of the search results, that being said, it’s important for us to learn how to deal with them.
Not only that but it’s also important to realize that the search engines don’t own the internet and there’s very little they can do to help you in such situation so make sure to take proactive steps and safe keep your business image!
Grab The Bookmarketer For Your Site
Did you miss any of these?:
- Importance of Having Your Site Crawled by The Search Engines
- How To Write Good SEO Content
- Top 10 Content Rich Ideas For Your Website
- Internet Home Business-Link Building Strategy-DIY SEO Work Schedule-Part 4
- Is PageRank Still Important To You?
November 12, 2009 at 2:21 am
Thank you for this article Sir.
Sir I have a question, that I have installed disqus comment form on my blog. I also put top commentator widget on my blog using disqus. But it not displaying link your blog. Sir please help me what I have to do for displaying like your top commentator list. Thank you.
November 12, 2009 at 3:16 am
I do hate the way that things said about you could potentially stay on the internet for years to come. This is why I always try to think carefully about what I write, and what I put my full name to.
November 12, 2009 at 4:57 am
@work at home: Chandan, please note that your question is not relevant on this post. In future please post your comments or questions on relevant posts on this blog. I have posts on plugins and top commentator which are more relevant.
To answer your question as far as I know the top commentator plugin is only supported by wordpress platform while your blog is a blogger. But you mentioned recently that you are moving to wordpress soon so I guess this shouldn't be a problem for long.
November 13, 2009 at 8:19 am
Great post, Nicolas. I've only had one instance, that I know of, where a blogger was indirectly criticizing something I did. It wasn't a big deal by any means, but I left a comment on the blog reinforcing my actions and refuting what was said. Then, one of my mentors and another online friend also left a comment backing me up. Suffice to say I think any negative feelings towards me at that point were nipped in the bud.
November 14, 2009 at 12:05 am
Very accurate and correct measures are given here to prevent by being negative.. these are such a keypoints by which your negativity in search engines reduces to low as zero. A great tips must say to handle the negative content as it is always not possible to protect the content as well the crawler..
November 15, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Hi
While what you said is true, especially due to the Facebook policy, but nonetheless, removing the content there will be a great start…
November 15, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Hi Ruth,
Things do stay on internet it's a fact, but that being said I don't feel that people need to be overly concerned either.
Just like in the real world, there will always be people who like you and people who don't.
November 15, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Hi Alan,
Thank you for sharing your story, it's a perfect illustration of my point! I'm glad that things turned out well for you too in the end!
November 18, 2009 at 7:37 am
In PHP you can use the function microtime, which return the timestamp very precisely. Store the time in a variable before the code execution, and then do the same in an another variable after the code execution and the make a difference.
November 19, 2009 at 6:32 am
Hi Nicolas,
This is something new to me, Can you point out an example or give me a link so I can have a knowledge.
Thank you.
November 21, 2009 at 11:17 pm
I view it as a lot like Ebay where you can look at a sellers history and if you see one or two negative comments but they have hundreds of positive comments then common sense kicks in and tells you that they are quality. Thanks for the article.
November 22, 2009 at 3:21 am
Been a while since I've dropped in. Handy information, fortunately I don't think there's anything negative about myself around.
November 24, 2009 at 7:01 am
I hope negative or somewhat wrong contents will not get the blog banned or what, but if ever is it possible?
November 25, 2009 at 1:12 am
Thanks for sharing such tips on handling negative content in search engines. It is very much true because negative content may banned the web-site by search engines…. Regards.
November 26, 2009 at 9:57 am
Great article. I think every blogger should read your post. This is very informative and helpful. Thanks for sharing this one.
December 1, 2009 at 10:05 pm
That's great advice. All of us who spend a good deal of time online, whether for pleasure or for profit, place ourselves and our privacy at risk. These are good measures to be aware of!
December 15, 2009 at 12:01 am
This is a very nice post.From this site we know some trick about search engine promotion.Thanks for shareing the idea.
December 15, 2009 at 5:24 am
Good article. I think every person should visit your site . This is very helpful to all of us to know it.
Online Business Marketing
January 28, 2010 at 10:13 pm
I learned more about online money making system through your blog at home. your think is great….
MBA Distance Learning