Online Reputation Management Horror Stories: Lessons for Protecting Your Brand

James Dooley: Online reputation management horror stories. Obviously, if someone's looking to have some OM services, they're probably looking to try and clean up something that they don't like that's online. So, let's jump straight in. Craig, come on. You must have some stories, some horror stories that some people have done and they're trying now to hide the online reputation management.

Craig Campbell: Yeah, I'm just trying to think how it can worth it. um how I can work it without throwing anyone under the bus or getting anyone in trouble. But you're right, any time I've ever had someone come to me going, "Can you clean this up?" Someone's either done something they shouldn't have or whatever. H and and obviously there's a line that needs to be drawn in terms of what you're prepared to to do or clean up. Um I have had people come to me uh you know and they've done kind of sexual things to to people I'm not talking about rape or or you know kitty porn or anything like that but they've you know committed a sexual crime and they came to me and they're like done online reputation management and like okay what have you done and then they tell you that and you're like nah I can't I I can't defend you, mate. And I told you this story earlier on about the I'm not even going to say it because it it will obviously tie back to that person. But, you know, he done that and I'm like, man, I can't really follow through with this, mate. Like, I'm sorry. So, I've had a lot of horror stories where people have done really bad and weird creepy things, but I've also had some situations where people have been accused of stuff and not actually done it. And and in the UK in particular, you're guilty till proven innocent. And that's a problem because again depending on what the nature of that thing is or whether you get accused of killing someone or shooting someone or fighting with someone and maybe punched them and fell and banged their head and you know ended up with brain damage whatever. These things happen in life and obviously people have the right to move on in life and you know do their time or whatever they've had and then come out and try and uh you know reinvent themselves and whatever. And I think there's there's certain things like that whereve I've done stuff as well. But some of the horror stories I don't want to talk too much about. H one horror story I can publicly talk about because it's not my story to tell is obviously your mate. um Epstein um you know it's you know it came out um that in the Epstein files or whatever that you know he was paying whatever figure it was

James Dooley: 50 was it or $25,000

Craig Campbell: let's go with 25 just for talking sake

James Dooley: $25,000 to to obviously protect everything he's now

Craig Campbell: yeah been proven guilty

James Dooley: proven guilty for or whatever's going on uh with that and obviously he was covering up a lot of stuff and I think reputation management it goes on in the world and some people have done some really really bad [h__h] and they're covering up in form of PR parasite and everything else that we've spoken about through throughout the the podcast you know you can leverage all of these kind of things to push the negative down

Craig Campbell: yeah I think I think on that I think anyone that's watching this and they wanted to see the Jeff Jeffrey Epstein files Um, there's like a place online if you type in Jmail and you type in SEO or reputation management, you literally get it's all public open source. You can see all the emails of what he was doing with SEO agencies to pay them to cover the things up. And with regards to online reputation management, you can try and suppress bad things that are being said online with positive kind of sentiment. I think for me with regards to horror story one the biggest one that I've come across is where someone had there was in Florida he gets arrested uh drunk and disorderly not really done much wrong just drunken so street and they get a mug shot taken and this mug shots on a government website and it ranks really well because it's a powerful site and then what ended up happening was the agency that they tried to then go with the online reputation management agencies is to try to get rid of it started to try to negatively impact the image ranking.

James Dooley: So instead of trying to sync it and suppress it, they started to do what they thought was bad viability campaigns to the image to try to get rid of it and all tried to dodos it and stuff like what ended up happening was it became a much bigger problem because it was only ranking like position number six in the Google image tab which not many people was looking for. Not only did it jump from position number six to position number one in the image rankings, it also then pulled through to the web search with an image carousel and that being the very first image that came up. So that's like the biggest horror story I've seen where someone's tried to clean the stuff up and it's like become way worse kind of now than what it it's a bigger problem now than what it was previously. Um where obviously what they should have tried to do is tried to suppress it. Um, obviously I'm quite close to people like Scott Kee who runs quite a large um online reputation management company tells me some horror stories in regards to

Craig Campbell: some of them it's [h__h] grim. I'll give you one that is really [h__h] bad, right? It might hurt your eyes. Um, if you were to Google hottest girl in Manchester and you look at the images, you may or may not see Douly with a well, go have a look. Um, go have a look. I don't even

James Dooley: That's a great example, right? So, hottest girl in Manchester, a picture of me shows up in a bikini, right? So, I was on a stag do stuff like that and then someone's ended up with a bit of phone and probably was Craig trying to rank the image. But what it can show you is you can rank images or rank videos or rank web pages for almost any term that you want. So, if that was someone was showing up for ugliest girl in Manchester and you was their position number one, you don't want to be seen as the ugliest girl. You could rank other images to try to suppress that. So, you fall down the peck in order to try to get rid of it. So, I mean that is probably a pretty good example of no encounter.

Craig Campbell: Horror story. All right.

James Dooley: Yeah, it's a horror story.

Craig Campbell: You can't you can't unsee it.

James Dooley: No, you can't unsee it. But I think obviously it proves you know if I wanted to um I could probably do damage to you and that can happen to anyone in any business you can do to me and vice versa. Um, so again, you know, we can put positive things up there or jokey things, you know, for a term like Hot Scale and Manchester, just a joke. But obviously people for their brand name or the reputation it can

Craig Campbell: yeah I think there's quite a lot of other ones that we can kind of touch on where I'll give you some of the examples and soon as I start telling you you'll remember the stories where people have um fallen out in the SEO community and the SEOs can cause some serious damage and you've ended up having it where some people have ended up ranking other people's names for like pedophile and stuff like that and like obviously they're not a pedophile, never done anything wrong, but they're trying to rank that for this. Um, people are trying to rank like negative stigma articles about that person and just making things up and these turn into horror stories in the fact that it does end up ranking and it can end up affecting one whether they remain employed if they're an employee. Yeah. They might lose um business from it. It might affect their multiplier of a sale and stuff like that. So, like you've got to be careful within the SEO community with who you who you mess with because there is some horror stories where people do go out and I'm like, "Come on, guys. You shouldn't be nice in each other." And it does it does happen. Um, and it's Yeah, it's not

James Dooley: it's not good. I'll tell you a fun story. I don't mind telling it now. It's not something I'm overly proud of, but um we had this guy um sign up. A lot of hassle by the way. This guy um not going to say his name or anything like that. It's not fair to do that. But this guy had problems with his web developer building the website. We were always involved fighting fight and fighting with the web developers. Our angle was we were going to do the SEO and the pay-per-click for this new project. But it took six months to get the website over the line. Guy paid about 50 grand for this website. We were fighting with the developer on his behalf and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, two weeks in to the, you know, the website going live. We're doing a bit of paper click and and and you know, start my SEO. Guy comes in two weeks h after commencing and uh and says something along the I don't think it's working. I'm like, you're two weeks in like, you know, everything's just through the learning phase and we're trying to create content and all this kind of stuff. You ah I don't I don't want to work with you anymore. I'm like, fair enough. It's a 30-day cooling off period, you know, it's a 30-day notice because we're created this and we're doing that, you know, so you'll have a final invoice and we're happy to draw a line under it. So, anyway, the guy left and everyone was happy and we're like, "That's fine. We'll just move on. That that [h__h] happens." H And the guy phones my business partner at the time and said to he chased up the invoice. He's like, "What's happening?" Blah blah blah blah. And he says, "He returns conditions of that 30-day notice period." says, "I don't know what the [h__h] paper I've written on go [h__h] yourself. I've seen red." I phoned a guy. It was like 10 grand or something. He owed us. I says to him, "See, if that money's not in my bank account by 5:00 tonight, you're going to rank for pedophile." And the guy went, "You can't do that." Says, "Watch me." Anyway, got a lawyer involved in all that kind of stuff. You can't defame. And he made me sign this thing saying, "You can't defame me. You can't defame my name, my company, and all this stuff." Um, anyway, I got my 10 grand, but I'm just not going to roll over for 10 grand. It's a principal thing rather than anything else. I'm like, "Fuck yeah, I'm going to use my skills to to fight my corner." Um, so anyway, uh, he pays the money and all that kind of stuff and I phone him a couple of days later. So I've obviously signed this document to his lawyer saying I won't defame him this and I bought his name name domain name keyword rich domain name and all that stuff and I had to hand that over and all that stuff as part of this agreement and then I phoned him up after that and he said what is it and I says see that paperwork that I signed not worth the [h__h] papers it's written on and he was like you [h__h] bastard all that down the phone and he's obviously went away telling people he's a [h__h] psychopath or he's a monster and all that stuff. I'm like, but I'm not rolling over for 10 grand because you're a dick. Um, I'm going to leverage my skills. So, that's where I shouldn't have done that and I wouldn't go out my way to rank someone for that. But the threat of that was my only way of getting my money from him. H. And rightly or wrongly, people can agree to disagree whether I done the right thing or not. But like you said, you fall out in SEO, you could be you could be [h__h] dealing with some loose cannon who can cause significant amounts of damage. So

Craig Campbell: that is something you need to be very very careful of as well. So I that that's obviously a we bit of a fun story. Not something I'm overly proud of or anything, but I've done it. And

James Dooley: do it though. You threaten to Yeah. to get to get the money in.

Craig Campbell: So

James Dooley: I like terms of conditions that the most disgusting part of that whole conversation is terms conditions. They went to paper sto. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So, anyone who's watching this, what horror stories do you have with regards to online branding, reputation management? Are you actually stuck at present with some negative stigma articles that's ranking for your name or business brand? If you are, make sure you reach out to myself or Craig. We can put you in touch with some of the best online reputation management companies that there is worldwide. Craig, it's been an absolute pleasure. Cheers.