So someone has posted something unsavory about you on RipoffReport.com. What can you do to remove a ripoff report? The answer is not just sit there twiddling your thumbs while your reputation gets dragged through the virtual mud. No, no, contrary to what you may think, you do have options. They’re not easy, nor are they quick, but they do get the job done…if you’re willing to put in the work.

Rebuttals can fan the fire

The first thing you should do is RESIST THE URGE to post a rebuttal on RipoffReport.com. Yours will be seen underneath the original, offending report and only serve to add more negative content to search. Instead, go to UntrueReport.com and post your rebuttal there. I’ll talk more on this later.

This could get expensive!

One thing you can do is pay Ripoff Report (RR). If you can make peace with the fact that you are giving money to the very company that is responsible for housing the disparaging remarks you’re trying to expunge, there are two different paths you can take:  becoming a member of their “Corporate Advocacy Program” or enrolling in a “VIP Arbitration Program.” The former is more expensive and will only result in positive content (RR may say something along the lines of the issue was resolved and you are back in good standing) appearing above the negative report if and only if Ripoff Report’s “investigation” into the statements made about you prove to be libelous. The latter involves an RR arbitrator and a forum for you to plead your case. If said arbitrator finds in your favor, Ripoff Report may choose to redact any untruthful statements from the report, but not take the whole thing down. So regardless of which one you choose, an unappealing listing will still be up on the site.

What if I sue them?

Don’t bother trying to sue the author of the report or Ripoff Report. It’s a waste of time and money. Even if you win and submit your findings to RR, they still won’t remove a ripoff report and they are impervious to any liability under the freedoms of the Communications Decency Act, so any lawsuit against them wouldn’t stick. What you can do is hire a reputation management firm to “bury” the material. This is a costly option, and again won’t result in getting it removed from the Internet, but it will at least get it off the first page of search results. These companies spend countless hours creating and then inundating the web with positive content, so the report gets weighted down underneath it all, like being at the bottom of a dog pile.

All of those options won’t get the report taken down, and once it’s up, you really can’t do anything to take it down unfortunately. You can, however, get Google to delist it from their search index, ultimately making it “unsearchable.” Here’s how:

File a lawsuit against the original author, not RR (or Google—NEVER SUE GOOGLE), for slander, defamation of character, etc., whatever legal term is most appropriate in your case.  MAKE SURE you can verify the validity of your case in a court of law. If you know the report is true or you can’t prove that it isn’t, then don’t even try. Move on to another option.

After you win your case, obtain a court order decreeing the defamatory report to be factually inaccurate and present it to Google. They will, in turn, honor that order and completely remove the displeasing report from its search index, letting it rot and decay in the un-Googleable abyss. It’ll still be on Ripoff Report, but the search reference to it won’t. Instead something like this will appear:

“In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result from this page….”

File an Untrue Report

Regardless of what approach you decide to take, one thing you should do is state your case on UntrueReport.com. It’s a completely safe space for you to confront your attacker and rebuke his/her claims. You can offer your side of the story without any fear of repercussion or retaliation. You also won’t be adding fuel to the already-burning fire because anything written on this site only serves to help you by creating positive content that could counteract the efficacy of the offending one (kind of like what a reputation management firm would do, but on a smaller scale).

Filing an Untrue Report is a much better alternative to writing something on RR, which could be seen childish and ineffectual to any future potential clients; and, you’ll be creating a new search result that can rank high on Google and even push down the offensive content.

The Positives

There’s definitely a lot of good to be said for Naymz. The user interface is well designed, and quite different from anything you’re used to seeing. You can earn rewards for strong reputation scores, and also monitor your reputation score which Naymz computes for you using peer assessments, social influence, and transparency.

Another useful feature is the ability to broadcast a public status update on a variety of social accounts linked to your Naymz account. And when you plugin your social networks to your Naymz account, you can build your RepScore and compare it with your friends.

The Negatives

But, looking beyond the plethora of bells and whistles, it’s hard to find enough economic value to pay the $12/month fee for a Premium account. For instance, it’s pointed out on the Naymz front page that a premium membership comes with “no advertising”. It’s hard to believe anyone would have a problem with advertisements on their public profile. There’s more…

Custom Video Resumes using still pictures–not cool!

If you’ve seen the canned videos that Naymz can create for users, you aren’t missing much. If a video doesn’t include more than a moving picture and words, it shouldn’t be a video. I think they’re on the tail end of the “Google loves videos, so we’ll make some” craze. It’s not that effective anymore, and you probably won’t be getting any job interviews because of it. Why not allow users to upload their own professional interview videos?

I have to pay for a vanity URL! Really?

With Naymz, vanity URL’s don’t come free. You’ll have to purchase a $12/month premium membership to get your vanity Naymz.com/your-name-here URL pointing to your Naymz profile. It’s free on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and virtually every other social network we can think of. For anyone to think they can charge for this is unbelievable.

For $144 per year, I think I’ll just stick with the weird and unnecessary number at the end of my profile URL…

Another reputation score

The reputation war is being fought on Google search results, social networks, and a handful of consumer websites–not within Naymz. It’s going to take a very long time before people start using any one site, especially Naymz, as a gauge of a person’s reputation against potentially conflicting online information. BrandYourself.com understands this, which is why they’re focusing on improving reputations via search results.

I want to fix my reputation without thinking about fixing it

When promoting yourself as a reputation enhancing service, you’re mainly going to get users who 1) have a reputation problem and need a positive search result, or 2) are helping someone achieve #1. LinkedIn is a powerful reputation enhancing platform, wouldn’t you say? But, they probably never mentioned the word “reputation”. They were too busy building a platform where professionals could link up. Consequently, they ended up attracting everyone instead of just users with problems.

It wouldn’t be wrong to cater to people needing reputation enhancement. Those users need help with Google search results, social networks, ratings and review sites, industry specific forums and blogs, and news related sites in general. Reputation monitoring is already ubiquitous, and scoring mechanisms just confirm what people already know.

What we really need are easy to use and effective reputation fixing tools. So far, Naymz has the online monitoring and scoring, it has the custom videos which we haven’t assessed for ranking potential, and it has the user profile to fill with resume data and testimonials. Good start, but more is needed.

The Future for Naymz.com

The site looks like it’s dabbling in too many things to have a clear winner. So, where will the company go from here? There are a number of possibilities including these two more obvious ones:

The Social Naymz

Naymz could polish the social network more and make it fun to build and compare reputation scores without calling them reputation scores (think “Klout”). This could be key moving forward.

The Reputable Naymz

Scoring isn’t everything. Naymz could probably ease off on the reputation scoring to focus on creating more online assets to make people look good on Google, and other social networks.

We recommend that you do try out Naymz.com and decide for yourself. We have been critical of a few features on Naymz, but it may be a useful reputation tool.

Is there another way beside removing ripoff reports?

But, there is a completely new way to combat an offensive ripoff report. Untrue Report promises to help you publish a report of your own to counter the negative, and many times, false allegations on a Ripoff Report. Think of it as leveling the playing field online by voicing your side of the story–the truth.

An offense for users to make their own decision about who to believe

Why is a site like Untrue Report needed when you can just post a response within the Ripoff Report itself? Many victims of Ripoff Reports have mistakenly helped the Ripoff Report rank even higher by adding their comments to the Ripoff Report page. After all, your comments are new content that Google might use to help that page rank better. Besides that, those attacking your reputation online are only going to become more abusive after you post a response in the Ripoff report itself. A completely separate, neutral website like Untrue Report helps you respond while avoiding these problems.

The idea behind Untrue Report is you get to publish your own response on a separate search result which appears close to the Ripoff report. Users search for you, they see the Ripoff report, but they also see the Untrue report. Now you’ve got a counterweight to the negative search result–something that makes people online say, “wait a minute, let me read both sides of the story before believing an anonymous or Ripoff report.”

Untrue Report is free to use

Best of all, you can create an Untrue Report for free. For those who want a higher ranking Untrue Report, with the potential to outrank even the Ripoff report, there is a Premium Untrue Report for a small fee.

Branding YOU

Your brand may not be well known or extremely valuable, but, if you exist online, it’s there. A brand is a name, symbol, or feature that identifies a seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. So, your personal brand consists primarily of your name, recognizable physical features (face), and unique actions or behaviors.

If you were to really brand yourself in the literal sense, you would either make a symbol or logo to identify you, or just get a branding iron, heat it up, and burn a mark on your–you know where. Both options are, in most cases, inadvisable. The question we are really asking is more likely to be one of the following:

How do I manage my personal brand? How do I enhance the value of my own brand? How do I increase my brand recognition?

Before we attempt to answer these questions, let’s go over some key concepts.

Your Brand Experience

All things represented by your brand–actions, thoughts, presentation–go into “experiencing you”, or the interaction between you and a potential client. The value you impart during this online interaction is critical. An interaction could be anything from a Twitter post, or a LinkedIn profile, to a blog article. Users may also experience you via your product or service and attach certain feelings, thoughts, or behaviors to that experience.

You might not think about it, but the process of searching for you on Google and reading through your search results is an extended part of your online brand experience. You can use tools like BrandYourself to manage your search results.

Key points:

• Focus on your value proposition, which is your promise to the world about what value we can expect from your brand. Simplify your social profiles, and clean out statements that portray you as a “Jack of all trades”.
• Enhance your marketing messages online so they all complement each other on what you do that’s valuable. A cohesive front goes a long way in forming a clear image of you.
• Censor what you say online. This has been said a thousand times before, but professional entertainers and famous personalities continue to break  this rule every day. We’ve been mistakenly told to be “real”, transparent, or honest online. That doesn’t mean you speak with followers in slang, or with profanity, or insensitivity.

Your Brand Identity

The aliases, images, websites, and content you use online make up your brand identity. The importance of a professional website, and professional logo, cannot be overstated. It’s easy to see when someone puts cost over quality when it comes to website or logo design. Ubiquitous web templates, generic or fluff content, and half-assed logos will give the impression that your business isn’t any better.

• Have meaningful, and appropriate user names
• Invest in a professional WordPress website
• Take the time to thoughtfully complete profiles
• Have professional photos taken of you and use them on profiles
• Get an editor to proofread and edit your content
• Use a professional email signature

Your Brand Recognition

You may be good at what you do, but if people aren’t Googling your name, how will they know? There are a number of ways to get your name out online.  You should have profiles on all the major social media platforms, and have them linked to your website. If you don’t have a website sitting on your own domain name, you’re missing an opportunity to showcase who you really are.

• Make sure you own your name across as many social platforms as possible. Use sites like Knowem to see what’s available.
• Get involved in your industry. LinkedIn Groups are a good example of involvement.
• Build relationships on Twitter, LinkedIn, and industry specific sites.
• Monitor your Google search results and strive to control most of the first page real estate for searches of your name.

This will be a two-part series with the second being about dealing with negative reviews within Yelp for consumers on Yelp.com.

Here, we are only dealing with reviews appearing on your search results.

Part 1: Push Yelp Down

Our goal, to make things reasonable in time and effort, will be to push down a negative Yelp search result below #5 (“below the fold”) on your Google search results. Since the first three search results are getting the lion’s share of the clicks, we won’t trouble ourselves with pushing anything off the first page for now.

Set Some Goals

Goal #1: Top 5 search results free of Yelp

Goal #2: Accomplish this without significant time and expense

Pay attention to the second goal for a moment. We can all but guarantee to push down search results like Yelp if we create new websites, or somehow take advantage of other existing sites at an expense. However, since this is a “do it yourself” guide, I don’t expect you to be spending countless hours or pay thousands to a web designer.

Look at What Works for Others

What we’re going to do is search for similar businesses with Yelp reviews that are not ranking in their top 5 search results. Then, we’re going to take a closer look at what those top five search results are. And, hopefully, we can use what we learn to do the same things they have done–most likely by accident.

A similar business is going to be similar in 1) industry, 2) location, 3) size, 4) name originality, and 5) Yelp reviews. Regarding name originality, we are referring to business names with components that are commonly searched vs those that are completely unique–Coffee Shop vs Adobe. The reason being, common names get many more searches for other entities, whereas, unique business names have fewer Google searches because no other businesses exist with a similar name. We won’t get into why at this time, just make sure you compare apples to apples.

Let’s say you own a print shop called MyPrints and you have a negative Yelp search result on #2 of your Google SERP. If we take a look at similar businesses on Yelp, here’s what you might find:

Companies with Bad Yelp Reviews Appearing on Google Search Results

From this table of companies we found, you can see that a number of easy to duplicate web assets have been used to successfully push down the Yelp search results. Some have been pushed beyond #5, and others have been pushed completely off the first page.

The common denominator seems to be: Google Places, Twitter, Facebook, Manta, LinkedIn, CitySearch and Youtube. Some were able to make use of Blogspot.com blogs, MerchantCircle.com, Inc.com profiles, and local.Yahoo.com.

We made an interesting observation for Manta.com business profiles. It appears that business profiles that are NOT claimed by the business actually ranked higher than those profiles where the business claimed the page. There is a visible difference in the format of these two profile types on Manta, with the claimed profile having more data in the title and description and other variances that made it rank worse.

Make it Part of Your Daily Life

These are the profiles and listings you should be working on. keep in mind, they need to be used properly and regularly. Just by creating them, you won’t get much mileage. It’s the way you use a listing or profile that sends the right signals to Google.

For some pointers, look at how these other companies have used these web assets. We haven’t looked that far, and we are not making any statements as to whether their use is right or wrong. Just note the way the used these sites and the results they’ve obtained.

Please don’t return complaining if you’re not able to get these same web assets to rank well for you. Twitter accounts with a few generic tweets are not going to rank well; Business profiles with modified business spellings are not going to rank well; inactive facebook pages won’t rank well; and, LinkedIn business profiles without proper URLs, discussion posts, group memberships, detailed product and service descriptions, and, um, employees, are not going to …