The World of Black-Ops Reputation Management

I suffered harm from a negative SEO campaign like this.

I was in a relationship with a young woman, whose father is a wealthy CEO of a public company. I will never be able to prove it, but he arranged for my name to be smeared. He ensured that when you google my name, "arrested" showed up in Google instant search. Needless to say, my clients were not thrilled.

He also got the local newspaper to carry a story about an anonymous person in a very specific field of work (mine) who allegedly was being reported for sexual harassment. Again, I can't prove anything, as no names were mentioned, only very direct hints. The newspaper article cost me more than a few friends and who knows how much business.

My lawyer advised me to avoid this guy and recommended that I terminate the relationship with the young woman. I did, and I never told her why.

I have since made several attempts to contact Google to get them to remove the negative search results, but so far I have not received a reply.

I am slowly gathering a pile of evidence of major tax evasion towards her father and his off-shore accounts on Cyprus, and one day revenge will be mine. Justice I have no hope for.

Funny thing is that many ORM companies fail at guarding own reputation:

Yet the industry has its own image problem. Even the most prominent player, Reputation.com, which charges $3,000 per year—and often many times that—to police search results for clients can’t entirely cleanse its own profile. The company’s first page of Google results is free of negative content, but when a user types the company name into the search box, Google’s auto-complete feature often suggests “Reputation.com scam” as one of the choices. “To solve this for ourselves is not an option based on the time and money we’d have to put into it,” says Michael Fertik, chief executive officer of the Redwood City (Calif.) company, which is backed by more than $67 million in venture funding. “Sometimes you can move content from page two to page five of Google, but the cost becomes so high that it’s not realistic.” Source: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/fixing-the-reputations-...

If future potential sources google the article author's name, they're going to find a vindictive-sounding article in which he fails to adequately protect the anonymity of sources to whom he explicitly promised it. Too bad there's no way to get something removed from google.

Nah, they endorse you by accident, most likely. Linkedin incessantly buggers its users with requests to endorse ones connections. You almost have to make an effort NOT to endorse, if you navigate the site.

> I am slowly gathering a pile of evidence of major tax evasion towards her father and his off-shore accounts on Cyprus, and one day revenge will be mine. Justice I have no hope for.

You possibly just blew it.