Walmart, that behemoth of a grocer that everyone loves to hate, has settled a lawsuit concerning gender discrimination for roughly $12 million.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. agreed to pay about $12 million in back wages and damages as well as hire more female applicants for warehouse jobs to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency announced Tuesday.

Wal-Mart already suffers from a serious web libel problem. Simply plugging their name into Google will bring up a number of bad links on the first page–this is not good for a company that is international in scope.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704548604575098192684023802.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews

Everyone roundly agrees that Tiger Woods messed up–that subject is not up for debate. A common discussion going around right now, though, is how much damage he has done to his reputation. His endorsement deals have been pulled, he’s stopped golfing, and the only thing he is in the news for is his marital infidelity–so I’d say the damage is significant.

Since 1984, Kathleen Hessert has run Charlotte-based Sports Media Challenge. A major part of her operation is crisis management.

“Over the years, crisis management has probably been 40 percent of our business, and at times it is 110 percent,” she said.

Hessert isn’t working for Tiger Woods, but has definite opinions on what he has and has not done.

“The lack of answering questions speaks volumes about where he is and about his psyche right now,” Hessert said.

Damage control is a huge deal in this case, just as reputation management services is when someone is slandered online.

http://www.wcnc.com/sports/Charlotte-Expert-In-Reputation-Management-Weighs-In-On-Tigers-Statement-84797162.html

Slowly each industry is realizing that corporate reputation management reaches them too. No industry is immune from its reach, because in every industry there is some degree of competition. This means image and reputation are important to every single business in every single industry. Eventually, every industry is touched.

“I had a good reputation before all this started,” Dallas plastic surgeon Dr. Jack Gunter told the magazine, explaining that he is the subject of the Website nosejobgonebad.com. “The person who started that Website never filed a malpractice suit because he knew it wasn’t malpractice; it was a complication,” the doctor said. But since the angry patient chose to post video and photos of his complications, the implication is that Dr. Gunter botched the surgery.

The medical industry is now in the process of understanding how detrimental online defamation can be to doctors and medical firms.

http://www.theplasticsurgerychannel.com/breaking-news/plastic-surgeons-fear-bad-online-buzz.html

Social Media has been used by individuals on the Internet in these last couple of years to connect with each other. Businesses, meanwhile, have used social media too. The ramifications have been, unexpected, to say the least. Businesses have not been able to use social media to sell, as they expected, but to brand themselves.

It is a more direct form of marketing. Again, this point was made to manage the expectations of those who use social media marketing. If they expect the results to be similar to PPC performance based online advertising, they will be disappointed. Social media is not PPC, it is about relationship building, reputation management, and sharing of ideas and knowledge. Relationships, two-way communications channels, and reputation management are becoming more and more important in the business world today. Therefore the importance of building relationships is paramount.

The rest of the article is well-worth reading, but the point is that social media has been incredibly important.With the rise of social media, reputation management has increased in importance also.

http://technorati.com/business/article/some-common-concerns-about-social-media2/

Microsoft has apparently been conducting polls concerning how often employers look to search engines or social networking profiles for information on their prospective employees. The numbers are shocking, too, it appears that far more employers use this method to research their candidates than is traditionally recognized. It makes sense, why wouldn’t you Google your prospective employees? If you find a picture of them acting inappropriately through a simply search, it is likely their behavior does not fit in with what you expect of them as an employer.

The survey was conducted in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and France. Outside the U.S., the impact of online information on hiring appears to be less significant. In the U.K., 41% of responding recruiters and HR professionals said they’d rejected candidates following the discovery of negative online information. In Germany and France, the rates were 16% and 14% respectively.

One reason for the disparity may be that 75% of recruiters and HR personnel in the U.S. report that their companies have formal policies requiring them to research job applicants online. In the U.K., only 48% of recruiting and HR respondents said their companies had policies of this sort. And in Germany and France, that number is 21%.

If these numbers seem high, then it should serve as a warning to be careful about social networking. Or, if the damage has been done, to utilize web reputation management.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222600171

Search engines play a massive role in the business reputation management industry, as everyone knows. They are the tool which misanthropes use to ruin peoples reputations. Similarly, they are also the conduit through which business reputation management professionals fix others’ reputations.

There is a fascinating post, pasted below, that describes how exactly a search engine works. The article covers with basics with incredibly clarity.

Long before you start to worry about actually ranking content, you need to get it into the index. And of course, to do that, your content needs to be found. In the world of information retrieval this is, appropriately enough, known as ‘discovery’. This in itself can be known as a few things including ‘data mining’ ‘knowledge discovery’ and so on. Regardless of the terminology, I thought it would be fun to get back to basics and look at how search engines might go about it…

The whole article is great and very instructive.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-search-engines-find-your-content/16809/

When someone Googles you, they will often find your blog, forum posts, or the occasional article with your name in it–but if you are a non-celebrity, the vast majority of them will be met with social networking sites first. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Ning, LinkedIn; these are just a few of the social networking sites that someone is likely to see when they punch a name into a search engine like Google or Bing. The article at the bottom of this blog posts mentions how social networking sites affect your online reputation by showing up first in your search results. It is an interesting read and one everyone should take a look at.

http://mashable.com/2009/12/16/community-engagement/

ComputerWorld, BusinessWeek, and TIME have all recognized that one of the leaders in the Online Reputation Management industry is Reputation Hawk. This company is one of the most respected and, pardon the pun, reputable, in the industry. Why? I have looked through a number of customer reviews and found that their services seem to work both better and faster than many of their competitors. So, what is it that an online reputation management company actually does?

Often the Internet is the source of anonymous attacks on both company’s and individual’s reputations. For commercial and personal reasons, a reputation is important. Companies value a reputation because it can effect branding, marketing, and advertising. Individuals value their online reputations because that often dictates what someone thinks of them. An online reputation largely consists of social networking profiles and search results. When people go out to a restaurant, make a major purchase, or go see a movie these days—they first look it up in a search engine, usually Google. The search engines reveals pages upon pages of results, but most people only look at the first one or two pages. This is what makes up a person or company’s online reputation.

So how does ReputationHAWK fit in? They are able to manipulate your search results and make them look how you want, given enough time. Although this isn’t an instant thing, it can take months, what company wouldn’t want to have their search results reflect a more positive outlook on their company?

This article gets  a lot of things right concerning reputation management. Especially the part about getting out in front of online defamation problems by continuously growing your search engine presence. This can, in many cases, be done by an individual. However, to do it right, a professional reputation management firm should be consulted.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Using-Internet-Reputation-Management-Techniques-To-Counter-Negative-Attacks&id=1005777

The Google blog has come out and posted some very positive tips and hints on how to fix a damaged online reputation and counter online libel. This is not a surprised move, as Google has–for years–been dealing with constant emails and calls from users wanting some link or another to be deleted from their search results. Here’s hoping this mention by the Google blog gives the online reputation management industry a bit more credibility.
http://www.techshout.com/internet/2009/16/google-search-sustains-reputation-with-reputation-management/