Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by klenwell 3723 days ago
White did not respond to messages left for her last month or Wednesday, but a résumé posted for her on LinkedIn cites her experience handling “a successful 6 month long strategic SEO (search engine optimization) and online reputation management campaign for the University of California, Davis, and Chancellor Linda Katehi.”

Culminating with a lengthy feature in the Sacramento Bee. Mission accomplished.
1 comments
SilasX 3723 days ago
So ... do they get a refund? I'm guessing the consultants' contract covered them here, as they can't do much about a legit info request.
link
deong 3723 days ago
Right. They probably executed the original contract well enough, but you can't game Google to prevent future news stories from appearing.

That's the nature of the game. These companies just flood the internet with innocuous data about the client in a way that's carefully aimed at pushing "bad stuff" down in the rankings. This works for a number of reasons, but a major one is that search engines prefer recency. Searching "Kobe Bryant" today is going to find way more articles about him scoring 60 in his final game than about him being accused of sexual assault in 2003.

If you keep making the news for doing bad things, that same tendency works against you. It's not like these firms can make Google ignore all the articles about you that haven't been written yet. Success is predicated on the idea that you'll stop doing stupid shit after whatever initial event required the service.

link
SilasX 3723 days ago
Right, but it's also kind of a special case in that your "future stupid stuff" must include the hiring of the very service that's going to clean up your previous stupid stuff -- so long as the public regards such hiring as stupid.

I guess this is one case where it's especially true that "if you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself" :-p

link
deong 3723 days ago
Yes, this is why this kind of thing probably only really works for individuals. There's too much public interest in a university or a large corporation, and so the act of covering your tracks is itself noteworthy.
link