Congress needs to hear from you, or these dangerous bills will pass – they have tremendous lobbying dollars behind them, from large corporations reportedly hoping to prop up outdated, anti-consumer business models at the expense of the very fabric of the Internet — recklessly unleashing a tsunami of take-down notices and litigation, and a Pandora’s jar of “chilling effects” and other unintended (or perhaps intended?) consequences.

Please let your Members of Congress know you OPPOSE H.R. 3621 “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and S. 968 “Protect IP Act” (PIPA):

• Phone, yes phone your Member of Congress! (House) (Senate)
• EFF Congressional Emailer – Oppose Internet Blacklisting (SOPA & PIPA)
• OpenCongress Congressional Emailer – Oppose SOPA
• Generic Congressional Emailer (You’ll need your Zip+4)

Learn more about SOPA, Protect IP (PIPA), and Internet Blacklisting:

• Growing Chorus of Opposition to SOPA
• Open Letter against SOPA from 83 Prominent Internet Engineers
• Why SOPA and Protect IP (PIPA) are Bad, Bad Ideas (Techdirt)
• SOPA News (Google News)
• SOPA Wikipedia entry
• SOPA FAQ (CNET)

Internet Giants Consider Blackout Against SOPA!

Where does your Member of Congress stand on SOPA? (Project SOPA Opera)

Opponents of SOPA: Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, AOL, Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, Etsy, Zynga, EFF, ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Ron Paul (R-TX)

Supporters of SOPA: RIAA, MPAA, News Corporation, VISA, Mastercard, Pfizer, Comcast, Time Warner, ABC, Nike, Walmart, Dow Chemical, Tiffany, Chanel, Rolex, Monster Cable, Teamsters, Lamar Smith (R-TX), John Conyers (D-MI)

Read The Full Story: http://www.seofriendly.com/hacking-ripoff-report-reputation-management-style/ 

Up until a few weeks ago there was another way to remove ripoff reports from search engines completely, that is until RipoffReport.com and it’s owner Ed Magedson discovered a glitch in there own website that was allowing extremely internet savvy computer geeks and “black hat” reputation management firms to insert a small string of html code in the name and title fields of the website when creating an account. This code was not visible to ripoff report and the code was a simple “noindex” code that told search engines like Google not to allow the page with this code on it to appear on search engines at all.

 Read It Here: http://www.seofriendly.com/hacking-ripoff-report-reputation-management-style/

Hacking RipOffReport.com

For over the past few years there have been thousands of business and individuals trying to figure out a way to make ripoffreport.com links about them not rank high on Google and other search engines. Reputation management was and still is the most common solution for having these nasty links rank lower. Reputation management firms like Reputation.com (Reputation Defender) and ReputationArmor.com (Reputation Armor) use social media, profiles, blog posts, domain names, press releases, fresh content and search engine optimization to basically bury (hide) the negative links deeper within search engine result pages.

Up until a few weeks ago there was another way to remove ripoff reports from search engines completely, that is until RipoffReport.com and it’s owner Ed Magedson discovered a glitch in there own website that was allowing extremely internet savvy computer geeks and “black hat” reputation management firms to insert a small string of html code in the name and title fields of the website when creating an account. This code was not visible to ripoff report and the code was a simple “noindex” code that told search engines like Google not to allow the page with this code on it to appear on search engines at all.

Here is an example of the code:
meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”

In order for this code to work you had to make an account at ripoff report and go to your account profile where you manage your name and location. You could simply copy & paste that code behind your display name field. After this, the last step was to make a comment on the ripoff report you wanted to disappear. Within a few days (up to 30), when Google “Re-Crawled” that page, they would see the code telling them not to index it and presto the ripoff report was off the search engine.

Reputation management firms and SEO firms were offering a service that claims to “Remove RipOff Reports” completely from search engines within 30 days or less. Businesses pay thousands of dollars to have these links removed and buried and normally thousands of dollars is warranted because it takes a lot of content, work, and money to actually bury a bad link as strong as RipOff Report. However, the “code injection method” only took a few minutes to implement and was very easy to do. Firms offering this service were making a killing! The service fees were basically 100% profit.

Now all of the people that signed up for this type of service involving the “magic fix” are back in line waiting for anther way to remove the ripoff links about them, thanks to the bug being fixed by Ed Magedson and his team of Consumer Advocate Crusaders. 

Not only are all the ripoff reports about people that used the “code injection” back, they are ranking stronger than ever!

Looks like it is back to good old reputation management techniques for firms like Reputation Armor and Reputation.com!

ReputationArmor.com commented to us about the code and said they were unaware of such a code and have never used it, also saying that had they known about it they would have been tempted to use it on behalf off their clients. Reputation Armor says they use good quality content and search engine optimization methods to out rank negative links for clients and such “quick fixes” are in most cases short-term anyway.

A Reputation.com (Reputation Defender) representative from the sales dept. named “KC” or “Casey”, stated he was not aware of such a code and went on to say: “We use a Blunt force approach, where we use positive content, there is no technology to make ripoff reports disappear like that, that I am aware of.”

Although this sales representative was unaware of such tactics, we were unable to reach anyone in the department to answer that question. We called at 9:30 AM EST and that was too early for the West Coast reputation firm to have someone more qualified for us to talk with.

We discover this bug from an email sent to us from a client of a Reputation Firm that used the tactic and is now looking for a similar solution. There seem to be a lot of these firms’ clients looking for answers. In no way are we stating that Reputation Armor or Reputation.com used this code or even knew about it, we cite them because of their strong presence in the Reputation Management industry.

If you have any information on the “Bug” or if you represent RipOff Report we would love to hear more about this. Please leave a comment and tell us the scoop!

Since online review sites are not held liable for content a user posts to their site (per the Communications Decency Act Sec. 230), it is nearly impossible to force websites to remove bad content that a user posts. The best option for anyone facing bad reviews online that rank high is to bury the offending web links deeper within search engine results. To do this one must launch a reverse search engine optimization campaign (Online Reputation Management).

By creating new content (web pages) and promoting existing content about the company or individual, and using SEO tactics like link building, you will be able to manipulate Google and other search engine results, making the Good links go above the Bad links.

Link Building is one of the most important ingredients to a successful Reputation Management and SEO campaign.  Link building is the process in which you go and obtain back links to your web pages and websites. Back links are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of back links is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page.

It is important to use proper anchor text when building links. Anchor Text is the word or phrase linked to your URL, or web page. This text defines the page that it links to, both for human eyes and for search engines. Ideally you will use the phrase you most want that web page to rank well for in the major search engines, and also a phrase that compels real people to click through and read the page.

As an example, this is Anchor Text: Blog Posting Service. That phrase tells Google that the page is all about Blog Posting Services. Using this phrase as the Anchor Text makes this page more likely to rank for that phrase.

There are many ways to obtain back links for the purpose of link building. One of the most popular ways is to use a link building service. A link building service will help you obtain quality back links that will help you boost your websites popularity and strength. For more information on link building check out some link building tips blogs online.

It is a fact that some blogs will rank high for your name and business name by placing your name or company name in the title and within the body of the blog post. Not only will blogs rank high for your name they will also push up sites that you link to from within the blog. If you are trying to push up a page about your name or business then you would want to link from YOUR NAME to a site about you that you would want to push above other links (This is called anchor text). Anchor text is basically the word you link from.

Reputation Management is a very expensive service and sometimes a blog posting service is all you need to help yourself. Then again a blog posting campaign may not be strong enough to bury certain links. If you have hired a reputation management company you could mention BlogPostingNetwork.com to them as they may be able to compliment the work the Reputation management firms are doing for you.

Online reputation management is commonly used to: Remove RipOff Reports – Remove Compaintsboard, Remove Online Complaints, Remove Reviews, and Remove Bad Press.

Reputation management is usually used to bury negative links about a business or individual. If you have negative links ranking high on search results, a blog posting campaign will help you fight the negative links by creating hundreds of “Good” pages of content about you.

Blog posts are the #1 way to generate high quality low cost content that will almost always rank well on Google or help other links make there way above other links.

It seems like it has been months if not a year since Google did  huge pagerank update. Many of my sites get pagerank updates each month it seems, so I am always interested in seeing a major update like I am seeing today.

Anyone else seeing any major changes?

You just knew Angry birds would be here, it’s on every top app list on the net and with good reason. It’s easily on of the most fun, most addictive games on the Market, and playing Angry Birds on the 10-inch Xoom screen is nothing but pure pleasure.

TouchDown

This is the tablet optimized version of TouchDown. TouchDown gets your Email, Contacts, Calendar and Tasks from your corporate Exchange server, and gives you a single tabbed view. TouchDown lets you interact with your exchange account on a tablet device in a unique and integrated way, allowing you to manipulate your emails, contacts, calendar, tasks and Notes from a single application, allowing you to switch between them using tabs on the top of the screen.

Google Earth

Hovering over your house and browsing different places around the world is a treat on the Xoom with Google Earth. The app works beautifully on tablets as to be expected by the Google development team.

Words With Friends

Shortly before the Xoom’s February 24 release date, Zynga’s immensely popular game Words With Friends debuted on Android’s devices. The Scrabble-like game, which is free, is much better suited to the tablet form factor than on any smartphone. Battle other wordsmiths in the living room or match your skills against a random stranger in another part of the globe.

IMDB

Browse the latest trailers, review movies and tv information on the Honeycomb enabled IMDB App. It’s had over 1 million downloads from the Android Market and a solid 4.5/5 average review, I think that says it all. Browsing the reviews, you can see tablet users giving positive experiences with app.

Pulse News Reader

One of the most popular Android apps, Pulse news reader is honeycomb tablet ready.A beautiful application that makes reading news fun and engaging. Pulse takes your favorite news websites and blogs and transforms them into a colorful and interactive mosaic. Tap on a news article to see a clean and elegant view of the story. Sharing it via Facebook, Twitter and Email is as easy as two taps.

FatBooth – Fat Booth!

Let us not forget the ever so popular Fat Booth App! Kids and adults love the Fat Booth app which allows you to turn a face shot of yourself or friends in to a “fat” version! You can see what you would look like with an extra 60+ pounds on you!

LIST YOUR FAVORITE APP AS A COMMENT!

Add your company name and contact details as a comment and we will aprove it for you! We want to have a list of SEO companies as comments so our readers can have more options. This is free advertising for you.

Rip Off Report (RipOffReport.com) has been online for over 12 years and is one of the fastest growing online complaint sites for consumers to file complaints against businesses and/or individuals. The site has a no removal policy of complaints filed, even if the original author requests a complaint be removed.

The ripoff report site allows businesses to post rebuttals to complaints but this causes the complaints to rank higher on search engines like Google and Yahoo. Most businesses and individuals do not want the negative link about them ranking on the first page of Google. Even if the complaint is not a real bad one, simply having your name or business name show up with the words scam, complaint, or rip off beside it will make people think twice about doing business with you.

RipOff Report has been criticized in the media for several years because of their policy not to remove complaints. The site has also drawn fire from thousands of businesses and individuals because the owner of rip off report (Ed Magedson) allegedly accepts payments from business ranging from $2500-$25000 to “remove the complaints”, however they never remove them, they only post a statement above the complaint that makes the complaint look less damaging. The complaint will still rank on Google and will still get traffic. They mask this service under the once named “Consumer Advocacy Program” or now called the Ripoff Report VIP Arbitration Program. Rip off reports claims that reputation management and repair is not effective and maybe this is an indicator of why EVERY reputation management firm that is worth knowing is listed on rip off report. Could it be that Ed Magedson and ripoff report is targeting the reputation management industry because the industry is the most threatening to his sites revenue and effectiveness?

Online reputation management and repair is a very effective process that will make online complaints less damaging and in some cases disappear from search results. There are dozens of reputation management firms online of which most are copycat companies that preceded the likes of Reputation Defender, Reputation Armor, and Reputation Hawk, which are the three companies that founded the reputation management industry.

Reputation management companies use a tactic called reverse search engine optimization to basically bury the online complaints. Some companies also offer mediation to have the offensive links and complaints deleted completely. To date there is no way to force websites like RipOff Report to remove complaints no matter how erroneous they are, regardless of what any snake oil salesmen or attorney tells you! Ripoff report and sites of their nature are protected under a law called the Communications Decency Act (CDA Sec. 230) which was enacted in 1996. The law protects internet service providers from user generated content, in other words if a member or user of a website posts offensive material or text, the website owner is not liable or responsible for the content.

Hiring an attorney to help you with RipOff Report removal is usually a waste of time. Not even the best attorney in your area can likely force ripoff report to remove a complaint. To date no one has won a major lawsuit against rip off report. If your goal is to make the rip off report links less damaging to your business and make them harder for potential client to find, a Reputation Management campaign is something worth looking in to.