Reputation Management Skews Search Results

Computerworld ran an article February 12, 2002 which raised issues about the ethics of "Reputation Management" - the art of minimizing the spread of negative information on the web.

Some techniques, such as watching for negative comments and then rebutting them, add to dialogue on the web. On the other hand, some corporations hire a search engine optimization (SEO) firm to ensure that only positive information appears on the initial search engine result list. The SEO firm may create dozens of websites promoting their client, effectively burying negative comments under a blizzard of corporate fluff that has an artificially high page rank on Google. Thus a researcher may need to scan several pages of search results to verify that there is no "dirt" on a company or individual.
_-D.D.