Comments on: Online Reputation Managment: The link aging conundrum affects it.

By: Ki

Ki — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:21:59 +0000

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.

By: James Wheelock

James Wheelock — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:42:19 +0000

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.

By: Tony Sena

Tony Sena — Sat, 16 May 2009 19:12:28 +0000

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.

By: Indian Retailer

Indian Retailer — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:33:26 +0000

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?

By: Malok

Malok — Sun, 10 May 2009 23:37:15 +0000

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.