Online Reputation Managment: The link aging conundrum affects it.
May 10, 2009
I have a couple of friends. Good people. Both run mid-size companies in the US. Both called me recently. Furious. When you Google the name of their company, a blog or a post from a blog either a) making a disparaging remark (and untrue opinions) about their company or b) apparently taking a controversy from years ago and bringing it up again.
Upon looking it over more closely, there seem to be a NUMBER of these popping up. Old controversies and old untrue posts floating their way back up to the top 10. In my opinion, much of this arises because of what I call the link aging conundrum. It is described in this post by Jason Lee Miller, to an extent.
Google, in particular, has a tough time in evaluating how much weight to give links based on the age of the link. to wit:
1) To keep longevity in the search engine and maintain the already relevant status of MOST searches for companies, and basic search terms, weighting an older link as MORE valuable helps. It also stops people from looking at others’ links and simply trying to build the same relationships (to an extent).
2) Yet FRESHNESS is a factor as well and recent controversies or news for a company is relevent. (You want your companies press release to get wide coverage and have some longevity as well).
Jason adds into this conundrum the factor of link velocity…I like that idea and concept…but it to has its limitations. How does that apply to a small company or medium company brand…do they have do be on a constant link building binge to avoid getting out ranking by an unfavorable but popular news story about them?
So back to my two friends. They want that CRAP off of the front page. And they have a right to…in one case it is just a bunch of ranting that a number of other bloggers linked to. It is two year old news even if it was true which it is not. In the other case it is something that was true but is surely no longer relevant, yet my CEO friend has a problem, she cannot get a CURRENT, and legitimate news story about her company to outrank it. Even by linking to legitimate news posts below the old irrelevant story, the aging of the links from the old posts are strong enough (they are from sites that are now authority sites) to make it tough.
Are you smelling what I am cooking?
That is a VERY tough problem to fix algorithmically speaking! It is also an incredibly large problem for Bldg 43 on the Google campus IMO. (I do feel for those guys.).
There is a fine line between accuracy cop and censorship…and the Google folks do a great job balancing that, GIVEN the size of their library stacks and the ever changing nature of their volumes.
There is a REASON that they try to eliminate this irrelevant stuff via algorithm. Can you imagine the volume of calls if they were to take calls from people about which posts in the top 10 to eliminate for whatever reason. Yikes.
So, who are my friends? I am not telling you at this point. (They have not given me permission…) but I will share with you some OTHER MAJOR COMPANIES that are dealing with similar issues.
To my friends: This make or may not make you feel better. You are in good company. Google the following and check out the Top 10:
Walmart: Union folks mad at ya? 
Gillette: RFID? Good grief, that’s been out for a while now Still hatin’ on ‘em for that?
Starbucks: They have their share of haters.
Fritos: Government recall from 2007 still makes news today? That is a lot of corn chips ago!
Speaking about 2007…Aquafina and Dasani (Google either or both!) had a controversy about them being tap water then. Old news..look at those SERPS. Yikes. What is the statute of limitations on this. Aging again.
Sorry Charlie! Google Starkist and you will see how long an internet rumor can mess up SERPS…My guess is that Charlie is gonna be sorry for quite a while…
To my two CEO friends again: If it makes you feel any better, in BOTH of your cases, it does not APPEAR that the folks that own the blogs / sites with the bad stuff are actively building links…Google is likely just giving ‘em a little extra credit for the longevity and that combined with more inbound links to the pages that are linking to THEIR pages naturally over time seem to be doing the trick. THEY MAY BE TOTALLY UNAWARE THAT THEY ARE RANKING THERE. THAT ISSUE MAY BE DEAD AND GONE FOR THEM AND YET YOU STILL DEAL WITH THE EYESORE.
One of you, I advised to build ten or fifteen STRONG pages to make it harder for this to happen (from ANY source..not just the current ones) and to drive away wannabe negativity, and that that simple investment of time would (help) protect you down the road as well. It is still good advise. There is always going to be controversy. Some of the examples above are pathetic in terms of how outrageous and without base they are. And yet (at least in part) they will persist due to the link aging conundrum. Dogs bark…the caravan needs to move on…
I hope that helps. It is the best advice I have for you.
If you’d like me to publicize your individual cases, please let me know. No charge at all for my time. I think you are both getting a raw deal…
Think about what I said though…the best defense is often REALLY good DEFENSE, when it comes to online reputation management.
Yup, google has really ratcheted up the amount that TIME plays a part in the search results.
As you said, this was mostly their attempt to stop the spammers from using the search algorithm against itself (the spammers would use MANY MANY thousand of sites to link to new articles of theirs which would result in their article outranking everything else for a given topic).
So, when google made time/age more important, that stopped the spammers in their tracks.
But what it has also done, is the sites & articles that have been ranking well in the search results for a long time period of time – are now enjoying essentially a grandfathering effect, where it becomess VERY difficult for newer articles & sites to dislodge the old ones from the top of the search results.
Which kinda stinks for the legitimate up-and-comers, that are vying for higher placement in the search results.
If there was a bright spot – I suppose that it could be that once your article/site does eventually become #1, it will become very difficult to dislodge you from that spot as well.
people love controversies…and controversial pages don’t seem to drop out as reader interest remains in them. Is there any way that a company could write in to the search engine and after certain time (say 5yrs? just a number!) request them to take the link off?
I had a guy in Las Vegas that was furious about this same issue. He had a particular person that was creating pages on different sites that spoke negatively about his business (real estate related) and these pages out ranked all of his stuff giving him a bad image. One of the sites that was used was WannaNetwork.com. Let me tell you, he was not very happy but stuff like this can happen.
Like Eric stated, the best defense is a REALLY good defense.
I think this is a rough deal in some respects to businesses, but if we are talking about a legit complaint or major issue I don’t know that it shouldn’t be available to consumers. What I hate to hear and see is when someone practices defimation of character using lies. Now this should be allowed to be removed all together. I have seen a couple instances of situations like this in the past with individuals that I know.Has Google ever publically responded to these concerns that anyone has seen.
One thing to try (and it may not work) is to write the site owner and say something along the lines of
“we have taken care of this issue and have taken care of the issue by doing x y and z”
“This is no longer true or this was never true”
They might not take it down but they might post an update saying. “we reported this in 06 and we just recieved an update in 09 saying x y and z.