Companies are desperate to control their reputations online, which presents a variety of business opportunities for people that can act as fixers.
I was just reading a post on the Wall Street Journal site, “439 Ways to Hate Bank of America,” about Bank of America working with a company to register 439 domain names that could be critical of the bank or their executives.
Apparently, companies are spending hundreds of thousands to $1 million a year on these defensive domains. Seriously.
“The BofA registrations followed this formula: Pull up the public roster of the bank’s senior officers and directors, and buy up web addresses with the officials’ names followed by the words “blows” or “sucks,” according to the list of the recently registered BofA Web addresses collected by research service Domain Tools. For example, among the domain names bought in recent days are at least 12 variations on Bank of America Chairman Charles O. Holliday Jr.”
I haven’t seen such a ridiculous game of suck and blow like this since high school.
This is simply a waste – any monkey could figure out 10 funny, better domains in two minutes.
I think these companies would be better served by locking down all of the social media services in their name with KnowEm.
Also, they should monitor all of the relevant keywords in search and social media and focus on optimizing the results for the terms people are searching and discussing.
It wouldn’t hurt to actually listen to customers and engage them, too.
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Just because they own the domain, soandsosucks.com doesn’t mean that there aren’t other ways to smear them online. With all of the free sites and social media sites available now a days, there are many ways to start a smear campaign without spending a dime. While this may deter some, others will just find a way around it.
Hi Stew -
I think it’s reasonable to grab your name and sucks if you have any sort of profile online, but I think this B of A strategy is silly, because it’s so over the top, yet futile.
These people are easy to find, but is anybody really trying to destroy them online?
I can’t find negative sites for any of them, and I am sure I could easily rank on every one of them by Thursday if I bothered.
Hi Shawn,
I have no argument with you about this being a waste of money (our money BTW). I think it is futile actually to try to protect yourself that way.
But I really don’t see much difference between some big name Internet marketer and a corporate executive. They are both easy targets for smear campaigns.
Given all the bad press about the corporate elite these past couple of years I suspect banking, and other corporate executives aren’t entirely paranoid thinking “nobody will ever hear about them”. In fact they are quite easy to “find” these days on Google:)
> They can’t actually think this strategy will have any bearing on whether or not people talk about them, do they?
If anything, I think it makes a game out of it – people will want to rank for them now with offensive domain names.
The name of a high profile Internet marketer with sucks is wholly different from a bunch of executives that nobody will ever hear about.
I didn’t forget at all that corporations have write-offs. That doesn’t discount that this is all a waste of money that provides a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
> BTW, I am sure they have a company figuring out how to protect them with social media too.
Yeah, they’ve got it locked down solid. The first place I checked – http://www.myspace.com/bankofamerica – is not handled by them. So, I’m pretty confident that they didn’t secure the hundreds of smaller sites.
“It wouldn’t hurt to actually listen to customers and engage them, too.”
Was thinking the same thing myself. Let people say what they want and employ people to actually communicate. Who have they hired to do this for them?
They can’t actually think this strategy will have any bearing on whether or not people talk about them, do they?
Jonathan
Ah, short memories. Remember the big mess with Mike Filsaime when somebody registered MikeFilsamesucks.com?
There was lawsuits, etc. Finally he bought the name…for how much nobody knows. How much time, money and aggrevation Mike went through is anybodies guess.
You seem to forget that BOA can write these domain names off as a business expense and then stick it to their shareholders and customers so there is no loss to them registering domains they think would be deleterious to their reputation.
BTW, I am sure they have a company figuring out how to protect them with social media too. It’s not like 2003, when few figured social media would be more than a fad.
Thats hilarious. Who in their right mind does that?
I can think of a bunch of synonyms to blows and sucks.
Wonder if this is in preparation for the upcomming Wikileaks release.
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