Why Reputation Management Is an Important Piece of the Search Marketing Puzzle

Companies tend to buy into the importance of running PPC Campaigns on the major search engines and they often see the value of organic search engine optimization as well, but most miss the big picture in Search Marketing when it comes to reputation or brand management.

The term itself, reputation management, has gotten a lot of buzz online for the past couple of years, and while those of us in the search marketing industry realize the importance of monitoring reputations online, I think it?s still the most ignored piece of the puzzle, particularly when it comes to the bigger brands.

To illustrate my point, I?ve chosen some prime examples. It?s not too hard to find where companies are neglecting to take reputation management seriously in their brand management strategies. Searching for examples on Google?s results pages is like shooting fish in a barrel?

A Look At Why Reputation Management Is So Important

Here are some examples of fairly large brand names who are suffering in some way from a lack brand management in the Google results pages.

• Hyundai


Hyundai is a large, recognizable brand name, right. And it performs quite well for a brand search on Google. (See the Hyundai Google results.) Notice their USA site is right where it should be, in the top organic spot, followed by a result listing for their Sonata page. They’re also in the PPC results at the top of the page, just as they should be. The rest of the first page of results is made up of individual dealers, their Yahoo listing, the Wikipedia page, their Hyundai motors site, and various news items.

So what are they missing?

They’re missing a misspelled version of their brand name.

A quick search on Google for “Hyundi” reveals this:


Sure, Google returns a “did you mean” spelling suggestion, but not before I notice that “three cars have transmission trouble” and that an Automotive Forums user says it’s bad, would have to be the worse car ever and that there’s a listing in the Rip Off Report… Does the bad speller continue in the brand research for Hyundai or do they move on to Toyota and Nissan?

• Diet Coke


Diet Coke, a leading brand in the global Coca Cola arsenal of products, catches the top organic spot with their Diet Coke Microsite and hits the PPC results with a link to the MyCokeRewards promotion.

So what are they missing?

They’re missing a popular page on McMan’s Report coming in at the #3 spot. If it’s above the fold, I’d worry about it. Here’s what today’s search for Diet Coke looks like on Google:


John McManamy’s Don’t Drink the Diet Coke article isn’t really bashing Diet Coke, it’s bashing all diet drinks that contain the artificial sweetener, aspartame. That would include Diet Pepsi and everyone else, but the title of his article specifically names Diet Coke. Am I suggesting that Coca Cola send Mr. McManamy a case of their finest Diet Coke to persuade him to change his mind or tout the beauty of the brand? Nope. But I am wondering why the official Coca Cola site, a site devoted to Coca Cola products, isn’t able to outrank this article in the top five organic search results.

• Diet Pepsi


Just so you don’t think I’m picking on Coke, let’s look at Diet Pepsi’s search results on Google as well. It’s not very pretty, but it’s definitely interesting. They’ve secured the top organic spot with their official Coca-Cola website, but look who’s coming in at #4:


So what are they missing?

This is kind of obvious, but for good measure I’ll note what I see missing. There are no sponsored result at all showing up on the first page of results. Sure, Pepsi captures the top organic result with their official listing but a glance at the first page of results has Diet Coke showing up. There IS a Diet-Pepsi.com site, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at Google’s search results page. The fact that Diet Coke occupies 40% of the results is sad for Pepsi (great for Diet Coke).

Even More Brand Reputation Comedies

While I could continue listing brands one by one with reputation management issues (to say the least) I thought I’d just give you the list of brand management funnies from the Google search results pages I found while writing this article…

• Comcast

#10 Organic Search Result on Google:


• Burger King

#9 Organic Search Result on Google:


• Vonage

#3 Organic Search Result on Google:


• Nextel

#7 Organic Search Result on Google:


• Iams

#4 & #5 Organic Search Results on Google:

I Rest My Case

Brand management is evidently not a high priority on the list search marketing tasks for quite a lot of companies. If it were, I’d have a hard time finding these examples, right?!

Hopefully you’re watching your reputation in the search results pages and making sure your brands aren’t fodder for the next Search Marketing specialist who comes along to write an article.

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