The following terms are used frequently in online reputation management.
Authenticity
The quality of being genuine; a valued quality among bloggers and the larger online community.
Astroturfing
Publishing fake comments and reviews online to create the illusion of popular support.
Branded content
Content usually in the form of entertainment (such as film or special broadcast events) that cultivates a rapport between a targeted audience and a brand’s products or services.
Content
Information delivered in any medium, whether text, videos, podcasts or images. (When two or more media are juxtaposed, it is described as “multimedia content.”)
Content aggregator
A platform that republishes content from multiple sources.
Content farms
Companies that create large amounts of low-quality content tailored to show up frequently and prominently in search results. Changes to Google’s ranking algorithm have made this strategy increasingly unviable.
Data scraping
The automated collection, indexing and publishing of online data; results in vast amounts of personal information about millions of individuals being available in “people” databases.
Domain squatting
Registering or using a domain name (“[your name].com”), then offering to sell the domain to the person or company who owns the trademark at an inflated price. A particularly damaging offshoot of this practice is when the owner posts content in your name.
Doxxing
Tracing someone or gathering information about an individual using sources on the Internet, then publishing their private information with malicious intent.
Forum
An online discussion site.
Link (or “hyperlink”)
A URL name or description providing an instant connection to a different website or section of a website. A website’s page rank on Google and other search engines is influenced by the number of links pointing to it (“inbound links”) and the quality of the sites hosting those links.
Linkbait
Content that serves to attract inbound links from other websites. As a marketing technique it aims to increase the site’s search-engine page ranking.
Link farms
A website created solely for the purpose of increasing the page rank of other sites by linking to them. Most search engines penalize sites connected to link farms (and have gotten much better at identifying them).
Name space
The URL and profiles on major social media sites that correspond to an individual’s or company’s name.
Online audit
An assessment of a subject’s online image, compiled by analyzing the accuracy and content of publicly accessible online information about an individual, business or organization.
Online image
A subject’s online reputation, mainly determined by the top results in a Google (or other search engine) search of the subject’s name.
Online monitoring
Daily, weekly or monthly monitoring of the information available about a person, business, organization or topic online.
Online reputation management
Establishing, improving, and monitoring the publicly available online information about a business or individual.
Page rank
A continually changing value assigned to a website or page to determine its position in a search engines’ results–the higher the page rank, the more likely people will find the website or page.
Revenge porn
Photos or videos usually of a sexual nature distributed without the consent–or knowledge–of one or more of the participants, most often by an ex-partner.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Strategically designing a website so it gains a higher page rank and consequently attracts more new visitors.
Search results
A set of data or set of links to data that match the criteria of a query. The ranking of the results–that is, if a link appears on page 1 or 9 of a search engine’s results–will depend on the relevance of the link’s destination as determined by the search engine’s ranking algorithm.
SEO-optimized
When a website or page has been designed to maximize its ranking by search engines.
Social media
Any of a variety of platforms, including blogs, forums, and Twitter, that exist to facilitate communication between users.
Social network
A network of individuals connected through a social media platform such as Facebook.
Sock puppet
A fake email or social media account set up to disseminate online content.
Sponsored content
A promotional message integrated into the editorial content of a website.
Transparency
Openness and sincerity in online communications.
Viral media
Content that attracts new viewers mainly through word-of-mouth in social networks, often resulting in significant and rapid visibility.