Have you ever tried “googling” yourself before a date? Most of the time, on online dating sites, two people don’t exchange full names before meeting up and attempting (awkwardly or no) to get to know each other, but sometimes, before any sort of first meeting, full names are in fact exchanged or both parties are already aware of what they are ahead of time.
When this is case, one party (or sometimes both) might use a search engine like google and look for untoward information about a person before going on the date. The problem is, for some people, things that happened in the past can make them look bad unnecessarily. Imagine if you were busted for a minor crime like disturbing the peace a decade ago, and information is now coming up on google (on page one no less) about what happened even though it was so long ago. Or a person who was accused of a crime even though they were not guilty of it, and was never convicted (yes, this does happen, we hear about it all the time), and is now having that information displayed openly to everyone. Or even a person who got a DUI by accident many years ago, for (again by accident) only being slightly over the legal limit, as part of a legitimate mistake.
We would like to believe in society, that these things never happen, and when they do, they are the fault in entirety of the person who was directly involved. The fact of the matter is, neither of those two things are true, and if many years later someone is doing a google search before a first date and sees these things, it can unnecessarily bring back problems of the past to the “front page” of a person’s life. In some cases (though not all) this can be unfair. That’s one reason Online Reputation Management can help, it can “push” negative listings far down in the rankings. And studies show that once they are much lower on search engines, the chances can be as low as 2% (or sometimes much lower believe it or not) that anyone will ever see them again. HopLite Online Reputation Management is a company that we believe can be of assistance when it comes to dealing with this, and we argue should be highly considered as a choice. There is a link at left to their homepage (and again, another one right here); and we think anyone who’s having trouble with their results should consider contacting them.
So the next time you go on a blind date, try putting your name into google and other popular search engines (like yahoo and bing), and see what comes up. Or, you don’t have to wait that long, give it a try right now. Anything negative you find can be dealt with, and that’s what ORM is all about.