The growth of the internet over the past two decades has come as a welcome development for businesses, both big and small. The internet has provided a whole new, vast and efficient advertising space. However, bad publicity surrounding the brand can also spread faster than ever, tarnishing the image of the brand. The reputation that a brand projects towards its customers, business partners and stockholders can have dramatic effects, not only on the company's revenue but on its very existence. Many brand owners and managers are still ignorant of the concept of Online Reputation Management (ORM) for businesses.
Search engines are powerful online reputation drivers. If a significant number of top listed search results on a company are negative, customers are likely to click on a rival company's entry. Good search results don't always tend to stay up on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). SERPs usually change rapidly based on emerging news, social media trends and algorithm changes. Businesses should therefore look at establishing and retaining a positive internet reputation as a continuing process that they need to dedicate themselves to. Negative news about a brand, whether true on not could dominate search engine results for years. It is important that a business takes control of its brand online by dominating as much of its SERP as possible. Owning and using all Top Level Domains (TLDs) relevant to a company's name can help to increase user generated information on the internet, an important step in achieving search results prominence.
The internet today is a much different arena than it was just a few year ago. Companies were selling to a passive audience and rarely responded to customer feedback. Today, a business can be sure that people, ranging from customers to celebrities will be speaking about it on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The real time nature of social media means that any negative story associated with a company can spread into a global talking point very fast.