WittyInfo

Personal reputation defense is a major part of managing your online reputation. Even if you don’t think that a defense strategy is necessary, you may be surprised to find bits of information about yourself floating around the Internet – information that employers, friends, and family members may have already found.

So, what can you do to stop negative information from being posted about you? First, let’s talk about some defensive steps you can take to monitor and protect your personal reputation.
Reputation Defense and Monitoring Tools

• Google: This is likely the first and easiest personal reputation defense step you can take. Simply by Googling your first and last name (putting quotes around it, like “John Smith”), you can find any number of web pages associated with your name. If you find material that you’ve put on your own sites that you don’t want appearing in search results, then you can ask Google to remove it. If someone else has posted it, however, then you’ll need to ask the owner of that website to remove it.Google also has a tool you can use to monitor your online reputation, called Google Alerts. Simply set up an alert using your name (again, in quotes), and you’ll receive an email anytime Google finds a new web page with your name in it.
• People Search Engines: By using search engines specifically for finding people, like Wink, Pipl, Spock, or ZoomInfo, you can many times find information that Google hasn’t picked up on. Some even offer additional tools for you to protect and defend your personal reputation. For instance, Wink allows you to join the site and create a profile page that Google will pick up on. Spock automatically “tags” your content with certain keywords found within the content. Sometimes these tags can be taken out of context and applied wrongly; however, you can join Spock for free and receive alerts anytime your profile has been changed.
• Blog Search Engines: Bloggers talk about anything and everything, and if you have a higher profile within a certain niche or industry, they could be talking about you. Blog search engines like Technorati, Google Blog Search, and Icerocket are excellent reputation defense tools to help you find out who is blogging about you.
• Public Records: Use a service like ChoiceTrust to order a free public records report, which will show you what employers see when they conduct a background search on you.