Not Everyone Is a Billionaire Who Can Sustain Business Losses Due to a Bad Online Reputation

For example, I spoke to a very successful and well-known business person–a billionaire–who damaged his online reputation due to several press articles written several years ago. Since these were from primary New York news sources, they appeared on the top of the first page of Google searches.

When these appeared online, the result was lost business and more minor real-estate deals; the damage resulting from these two links was worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in losses.

Newspapers Wrote Negative Articles About a New York Real-Estate Mogul

To reverse this, he decided to go with a repair company that was less experienced in such issues and was attracted to a meager but unrealistic price.  

However, they were not effective. Unfortunately, he did this twice, trying to work with two different companies, which either didn’t solve the problem or only worked temporarily.

Because of this, the two negative links still showed up on the first page of Google, and as a result, he continued to lose deals and money. A few additional wrong links also appeared on the first page of search results to make matters worse.

Also, I could easily see the work done was probably causing further reputation harm and was of poor quality.

For example, the content created was not aligned with the real-estate business; it mainly focused on political rants, which is never a way to repair a reputation. So not only were the links still out there, but they remained there for a year or more while the repair attempts were going on.

Because he decided to go with a few other companies that did not solve the problem, it meant the pain lingered for more than a year (since each repair usually takes about six months or more to resolve). The lesson I want to share is that it’s crucial to find a good repair solution immediately.

(By the way, those links are still showing up for him and his business…).