Internet Search Engine Mayhem

This was originally posted on January 14, 2011. I have made a few updates to the post and reposted as recently there  was an undesirable association in the Internet Search Engines.  The article was removed by the online service that published it but the link remained in the Google search engines and could be brought up in the cache. I removed the link and cleared the cache using the Google Webmaster Tools: Fix A Problem. 

SEO Mayhem
by
JT Bogden, PMP

During a job search keeping the internet under control is important as potential employers scan the internet for information about you. People need to know how to manage information on the internet in order to assure that incorrect associations and misinformation is not posted.

On the Internet Google reigns supreme! The Google search engines crawl the Internet to find then reveal every kind of detail out there about you.  The Google Search Engine Optimizer, SEO, looks for associations in the information and lists them together for people to review when searching the internet for information. While in general a great tool, the optimizer can make incorrect associations that can be damaging to a person when social media is involved.  I was confronted with a challenge when Google's SEO commingled my social media information with another person's social media information incorrectly portraying me as a character that I am not. Most  people would have gone into a frenzy. I instead initiated a deliberate and aggressive information campaign to overwhelm the erroneous messages and distance myself from the incorrect association. Others should understand how they too can gain greater control over seemingly uncontrollable circumstances on the Internet.

The first step in gaining control over any situation is to understand the circumstances, technology, and processes. In gaining this understanding one is able to attenuate the problem to a narrow set of issues that can be individually addressed. Internet search engines are limited to what they find. So I simply changed what they could find about me. This was a little labor intensive but began to yield results in a very short amount of time distancing myself from the errant association. In my case, I identified the commonalities that caused the errant commingling and updated my information everywhere possible in order to mitigate the association. This meant I had to make changes to my social media accounts such as FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  I also went out to my blog postings and either deleted or changed the one's that had the commonalities identified so the search engines would not find the common information any longer. I also found I had to make updates to my email signatures, resumes, cover letters, and other documents as well. This was necessary to ensure that future errant associations were not made online or offline.

Google's SEO technology combines then caches information which is the source of the errant associations. This can be removed by the use of simple internet management tools. There are a variety of approaches to handling this issue. Since I removed the source of the confusion the new information would be cache'd again at some point flushing the older incorrect associations out of the system. I accelerated this process in two ways. The first action was to remove the source URLs in which the incorrect associations originated from the search engines. I used Google's Webmaster Tools and Webmaster Tools: Fix A Problem and other like applications to accomplish this task. This ensured that if any other information was out there it would not be picked up and listed. For example, an Australian website pasted my blog post into their webpage with the older URL. I have no control over the Australian site but I could tell the search engine to ignore older URL pasted in the site.  The second action I took was to flood the Internet with messages that further distanced me from the undesirable association and correctly cast me. Crawlers located these new messages and began populating the listings within 24 hrs.

Finally, the contextual nature of the association is, quite frankly, insulting to my character and was not remotely close to my true character. Therefore, I crafted a series of posts that highlighted my  conservative American values to move forward and not look back. These messages engendered people and resulted in new social media connection requests. This was an indicator that my efforts to correct the situation were working. In the end, I stopped the crawlers from making the errant associations by removing the cause or commonalities, drove messages on to the Internet that overwhelmed the listings having the errant associations, and published a series of post reflecting my true values that distanced me from the errant association. 

Social media is a new tool in our world. This event is unfortunate and most likely has a hidden cost to me.  Older business cards and ported documents have the potential to revisit the issue since they possess some of the information that contributed to the errant association.  Nonetheless, the correct messages are out there in force and the errant messages are being marginalized. I cannot afford to look back and waste time on this nonsense. I am on this planet for a purpose and distractions like this are part of the game to be expected. One must deal with it and move on. Search engines in the future will need to offer tools to correct incorrect associations and allow people to manage their online presence with greater ease.

I suggest that others considering an online presence research the Internet before creating a presence and regularly monitor their presence. You should use distinguishing language, names, and other information in order to avoid errant associations with characters, topics, and beliefs that are not consistent with your principles and values.  I hope my process helps many of you should you encounter the same issues.