Your reputation online, Part 2: Repairing the damage

Part 1 of this two-part series covers the potential problems Web users can experience when information about them is posted online.

So, you've got an online image control crisis. Now what?

In response to the growing threat of online image crises, businesses have sprung up that address exactly that problem. They work to repair your online image using a variety of tactics, including putting more positive information out there to show up high in search results, removing offending information, and building their clients' personal or corporate brands.

"It's really a new industry," Tom Drugan, CEO of the reputation repair company Naymz, told TechNewsWorld. Launched by Drugan in 2006, Naymz offers both a social networking site and a reputation repair service.

"We started getting a lot of clients [of the social networking site] who had a negative piece of information that showed up in searches, and they asked for our help," Drugan said. "We can work to put up some positive content and make sure it's search engine optimized."

If a client has gotten a DUI, for instance, or has been fired from a high-profile job, or has other such black marks in their past, Naymz works to push that information down in search engine results. It doesn't remove information, but it creates positive information and links so that the negative information is further down. Statistics show that fewer than 5 percent of searchers get beyond the third page of search results, so Naymz focuses on getting positive content on those first few pages.

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