Maintain and Manage Your Online Reputation - Tips from a Web Hosting Provider

Recruiters and employers often do online searches for information about prospective employees. Employers also sometimes search online for current employees — people have lost their jobs because of what they wrote or uploaded online. Some colleges search for information on applicants and reject some because of what they find.

Online content has consequences in social life as well. In the dating scene, people often Google prospective dates before going out with them. And it doesn't stop there.

Chances are that people can find something about you on the Web. Comments you wrote several years ago may be traceable back to you, and other people may have mentioned you in newsletters, blogs, photo captions, or other online publications.

We discussed in the article Bad Web Press: Can It Be Fixed? how to build and protect your online business reputation. Your reputation as an individual is also important. It reflects on your business if you have one or work for one, and your reputation as an individual is connected with you wherever you work, study, or play.

Remember your audience

When you write online in a forum, newsgroup, blog, social networking site, or other website, your potential audience usually includes anyone, anywhere with online access, present and future.

Newsgroups used to feel more private. Their content wasn't indexed by most search engines; people had to search newsgroup archives to find what had been posted. Now, many forums pull content from newsgroups, and the "more" link on the Google home page shows the "Google Groups" link.

Content elsewhere online that may be private or semi-private when you write it could also become public.

You may feel anonymous commenting in blogs, creating a MySpace profile, and taking part in forum discussions. In most cases, you can use a non-identifying username. But do you include a link to your website with your profiles or posts? Anyone who knows how to look up domain registration information can identify you through the domain record. Perhaps you use the same username at other sites, where you may have included identifying information at one point. And many of us have posted email addresses online before we understood how spambots collect email addresses. If people want to find out who someone online is, they often can.

You have control over the content at your own website. But other people might copy some of it, Google keeps it cached for some time after it's removed (see the "Cached" links in search results), and Internet Archive has archived versions of web pages going back for years.

Prevent problems before they happen

How much does it matter what other people can find out about you online? That depends on these factors:

• Your need for privacy
• What you've said or done online
• Who might be searching for information about you

Your circumstances may change, and you don't know who might want to find information about you and possibly use it against you.

If you write content at your own website that you don't want indexed, you can prevent search engines from indexing it by telling them which directories and pages not to crawl via the robots.txt file. (See Search Indexing Robots and Robots.txt for information on how to use robots.txt.) Of course you need to take this step before publishing content online that you don't want indexed.

At some social networking sites, you can restrict who can view your profile.

The best way to maintain your online reputation is to avoid writing or posting anything that you wouldn't want traced to you later:

• Be polite and considerate at all times. Resist the temptation to get into flame wars or other questionable behavior.
• Don't criticize individuals, companies, or schools unless you're prepared for doors closing to you because of those comments. The company you criticize isn't likely to hire you after finding those comments, and other companies may reject your application over concerns that you'd criticize them the same way.
• Be careful what you upload. Some photos that show you having fun might cause you embarrassment or cost you opportunities later.
• Don't include your last name or the names of family members if you might not want them online in the future.
• When you do use your full name or other identifying information, conduct yourself as a professional whether or not you represent a business.

Know what's said about you

Millions of proper name searches are done every day. When you search for your name, use more than one search engine (Google, Yahoo, and MSN are the top three) as they may produce different results, and look through several pages of search results. Adding more search terms such as the college you attended or your online usernames will help narrow the results if your name is a common one.

You can also set up Google alerts or a Technorati watchlist so that you're emailed whenever the search terms you specify are found online. If you want to be more thorough, use MonitorThis to subscribe to your search terms via RSS to 22 different search engines.

Take action with your web hosting account

If you posted content you don't like at your site or at one where you can edit your content, you can remove what you published. However, the content will remain archived via Google and Internet Archive.

If you posted the content at a forum, blog, review site, or other site where you can't edit your content, you can contact the site owner or administration and ask if they'll remove it or edit it. You may or may not be successful.

If you posted the content on Usenet, you can contact Google via the address you posted the content with and ask to have it removed from their Usenet archives. As long as you can verify that you're the one who posted the content, you can probably get it removed. But if other sites published the content, your success will depend on your request to them and on the site management.

If someone else published unflattering comments about you or photos of you, you can ask to have them removed. But unless the content is clearly libelous and you can pursue legal action, you'll have to rely on the person's goodwill towards you.

Depending on where the content is, you may be able to respond with your version of the situation. You can post new content on your web hosting account via FTP to your website. If you choose this path, staying calm and presenting the facts only will gain you more credibility than a rant would. And if you admit you made a mistake and show that you've learned from it, you'll lessen the possible negative impact.

Reinvent your reputation

When there is incriminating content about you online that you can't eliminate, you can counter it by presenting a more factual, current, or professional version of who you are:

• Create a site about yourself. If it's available, consider using your name in the domain name. Or create a blog at a free blog site.
• Post your resume, your achievements, and content that demonstrates your knowledge in your areas of expertise.
• Don't be afraid to show your personality and parts of your personal life through your words and photos as long as the content doesn't show you in a negative light. Depending on what you're working to counter, you may want to discuss what happened and how you've changed since then.
• Use search engine optimization techniques to help your site do well in search results.