What you do or say will never die
Imagine the situation: a new employer runs a Google search on you and finds incriminating photos a friend posted on the web 10 years ago. You go running to that friend and ask them to remove the images; you have some measure of direct influence. Now imagine you are a marketing director moving into a new company with a mandate to change the image of the business. The web is still awash with the last 10 years’ negative news about your brand and there is very little you can do to remove it.
We now find that past misdemeanours and criticisms last forever online. Unfortunately, if they are featured on a website assigned a high authority rating by Google they will appear in the first few search rankings possibly for years to come. Is this fair? Businesses make mistakes but may have revised their processes, be under new management, or no longer offer the product or service criticised.
One client was faced with the problem where the company’s webpage ranked behind a forum comment that criticised the business. Larger enterprises can of course use SEO specialists and employ dedicated strategies to try and ensure positive news about their organisation appears higher in the online search engine rankings, but it can be a costly and time intensive process.
In the past people talked of a negative story becoming tomorrow’s chip paper, ready to be discarded and eventually forgotten. In the past news died, people didn’t proactively search microfiche or newspaper archives for negative stories.
Archived news copy online means it is increasingly difficult for a company to reinvent itself and transform the brand. Some would argue that this is a good thing and that it makes the challenge for marketing and brand directors all the more appealing. However, others would say there should be a statute of limitations on archived news copy on the web. This would ensure that firms were judged on their recent history, rather than on past indiscretions.
Do you believe there should be a statutory time limit for the removal of news items online?