Managing your reputation through search results

(Cross-posted on the Webmaster Central Blog)

A few years ago I couldn't wait to get married. Because I was in love, yeah, but more importantly, so that I could take my husband's name and people would stop getting that ridiculous picture from college as a top result when they searched for me on Google.

After a few years of working here, though, I've learned that you don't have to change your name just because it brings up some embarrassing search results. Below are some tips for "reputation management": influencing how you're perceived online, and what information is available relating to you.

Think twice

The first step in reputation management is preemptive: Think twice before putting your personal information online. Remember that although something might be appropriate for the context in which you're publishing it, search engines can make it very easy to find that information later, out of context, including by people who don't normally visit the site where you originally posted it. Translation: don't assume that just because your mom doesn't read your blog, she'll never see that post about the new tattoo you're hiding from her.

Tackle it at the source

If something you dislike has already been published, the next step is to try to remove it from the site where it's appearing. Rather than immediately contacting Google, it's important to first remove it from the site where it's being published. Google doesn't own the Internet; our search results simply reflect what's already out there on the web. Whether or not the content appears in Google's search results, people are still going to be able to access it — on the original site, through other search engines, through social networking sites, etc. — if you don't remove it from the original site. You need to tackle this at the source.

• If the content in question is on a site you own, easy — just remove it. It will naturally drop out of search results after we recrawl the page and discover the change.
• It's also often easy to remove content from sites you don't own if you put it there, such as photos you've uploaded, or content on your profile page.
• If you can't remove something yourself, you can contact the site's webmaster and ask them to remove the content or the page in question.

After you or the site's webmaster has removed or edited the page, you can expedite the removal of that content from Google using our URL removal tool.

Proactively publish information

Sometimes, however, you may not be able to get in touch with a site's webmaster, or they may refuse to take down the content in question. For example, if someone posts a negative review of your business on a restaurant review or consumer complaint site, that site might not be willing to remove the review. If you can't get the content removed from the original site, you probably won't be able to completely remove it from Google's search results, either. Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business. If you can get stuff that you want people to see to outperform the stuff you don't want them to see, you'll be able to reduce the amount of harm that that negative or embarrassing content can do to your reputation.

You can publish or encourage positive content in a variety of ways:

• Create a Google profile. When people search for your name, Google can display a link to your Google profile in our search results and people can click through to see whatever information you choose to publish in your profile.
• If a customer writes a negative review of your business, you could ask some of your other customers who are happy with your company to give a fuller picture of your business.
• If a blogger is publishing unflattering photos of you, take some pictures you prefer and publish them in a blog post or two.
• If a newspaper wrote an article about a court case that put you in a negative light, but which was subsequently ruled in your favor, you can ask them to update the article or publish a follow-up article about your exoneration. (This last one may seem far-fetched, but believe it or not, we've gotten multiple requests from people in this situation.)

Hope these tips have been helpful! Feel free to stop by our Web Search Forum and share your own advice or stories about how you manage your reputation online.

Posted by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst

Google Translator Toolkit and minority languages

Today, we've added 285 new languages to Google Translator Toolkit, bringing the total number of languages supported by this product to 345 — and making it possible to translate between 10,664 language pairs. Google Translator Toolkit is a language translation service for professional and amateur translators that builds on Google Translate and makes translation faster and easier.

In addition, we've made the Translator Toolkit interface available in 35 languages, so that more people can access the service in their own language.

At Google, we're focusing on how Translator Toolkit can help preserve and revitalize small and minority languages. Minority languages, also called regional, indigenous, heritage or threatened languages, are languages spoken by the minority people in one locale in a sovereign state or country. Were these endangered languages to become extinct, it would mean an immeasurable loss of knowledge, culture and way of life to minority people worldwide.

For this project we worked with Dr. Te Taka Keegan, a Māori language activist and senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Waikato who spent much of his career on how technology can assist in minority language revitalization. At Google, Dr. Keegan researched how computer-aided translation tools can help preserve minority languages.

To support his research, we released an alpha version of the Translator Toolkit to various members of Māori translation community in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Māori, an Eastern Polynesian language spoken predominately in Aotearoa (New Zealand), is a good starting point because it is one world's 7,000 languages under threat of extinction. According to the 2006 census, 132,000 people can hold a conversation in Māori. That's roughly 24% of Māori or 4% of New Zealanders.

Dr. Keegan found that tools such as Translator Toolkit can help minority languages in several ways:

• Translation memories and glossaries, when shared across members of a language community, can help unify the language’s written form, increasing translation speed and quality of documents published in that language and preserving the language in the long run.
• Because computer-aided translation can improve translation speed and quality, translators become more productive. When automatic translation is available, as it is for 87 of Google Translator Toolkit's 345 languages, it increases speed further by producing instant translations that people can use as a starting point for their work. And at Google, we use these human translations to improve the translation algorithm of Google Translate over time, creating a virtuous cycle that benefits both human translators and machine translation.
• Online presence of small languages keeps languages relevant in the age of the Internet and globalization, encouraging minority language use by children, who are ultimately responsible for bringing the language to future generations.

Languages provide identity, pride, a sense of belonging and spiritual guidance to minority language communities. We hope that by giving both majority and minority language speakers around the world the tools to make online content accessible in their language, we will enable more people to share their culture and knowledge with others worldwide.

Ko te reo te hā te mauri o te Māoritanga
Language is the very life-breath of being Māori. 

(Māori)

Mak-muwekma mak-noono ya roote 'innutka, mak-'uyyaki_,
Nuhu, mak pekre ne tuuxi,
'At mak roote 'innutka hu_i_tak.
Our culture and our language are the way to our past,
From it we embrace the present,
And follow the road to the future.
(Muwekma Ohlone Indian tribe, original residents of San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties, California, the home of Google)

Posted by Michael Galvez, Product Manager, and Sanjay Bhansali, Engineering Manager

Introducing this year's CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Finalists as iGoogle artists!

We're always delighted to introduce new design flair to our user experience, especially through the personal expression of iGoogle themes. As a canvas for artists to express themselves and reach Google users around the world, we've shared more than 125 iGoogle Artist themes since May 2008. Today, I'm excited to announce ten new artist themes, all from talented up-and-coming fashion designers you may not have already heard of.

Each year, Vogue and CFDA sponsor a fashion fund, created to support emerging designers. Through inspiration drawn from Google, our colors and our products, this year's ten finalists have created both incredible fashions and corresponding iGoogle themes. From the high-tech and contemporary designs of Wayne to the Google Maps-inspired work of Sophie Theallet, each of these ten new themes is a unique way to refresh your homepage's fall wardrobe.

Artist themes are one of many ways we invite talented artists and innovators to share their designs, whether world-renowned or emerging. So check out the latest Artist themes and pick one that appeals to you.


Finally, we'd like to offer our congratulations to this year's Fashion Fund finalists. We're proud to be showcasing them in our iGoogle artist themes. Based on their iGoogle themes and design entries, their talents are obvious and we're happy to see them recognized!

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience, and Michaela Prescott, Senior Product Marketing Manager