Google endorses reputation management and tells people “Publish positive content about yourself” and “get stuff that you want people to see to outperform the stuff you don’t want them to see.” This has always been the foundation of a reputation management campaign.

The advice is basic: Create a Google Profile (free and easy also not effective for pushing down stuff). Ask happy customers to review your business online (may create more negative items). *Publish positive content about yourself (*this is the good advice is our opinion).

It is motivating to see Google offering tips on how to “get stuff that you want people to see to outperform the stuff you don’t want them to see.” Reputation management can sometimes be a controversial issue – some people think it’s disreputable to create and optimize content for the express purpose of displacing negative content surreptitiously. Google’s endorsing it in today’s blog post, and offering suggestions for how to make it happen.

Google seems to be trying to do some preventative customer service here also. You can visualize the quantity of emails (and maybe phone calls) Google gets from businesses and individuals who are displeased about what they see when they Google themselves. The blog post by Google basically says, would you stop asking us to clean up the search results you don’t like about yourself?

“Rather than immediately contacting Google, it’s important to first remove it from the site where it’s being published. Google doesn’t own the Internet; our search results simply reflect what’s already out there on the web.”

Not only is Google possibly trying to slim down the amount of email and phone requests but maybe they are also attempting to prevent any future law suits files against them for results they display.

In closing it seems that Google has endorsed reputation management and using reputation management companies to help you gain control of what people see about you.