We cannot help but speculate what the next mobile phone does, or if Britney will ever make music again. Every day thousands of thoughts will cross our mind from seeing an attractive girl to wondering what will happen in the book we are currently reading. Lots of us share these thoughts with other people. When we are out and about, in a restaurant or just down the pub. For a large percentage of us we are able to leave it at that….Just speculation. What happens though when people start speculating on line , in forums, on blogs, and wikis?

Well a couple of things can happen depending who does what, where and when. If the speculation is in a enclosed network such as Face book, or a closed biz forum, unless you are a member of that particular group, it is very unlikely that you will see it on the internet. The other option is that someone blogs, or posts something in a forum. Here there are a number of things you can do. If you disagree with a post or information that has been written about you on the internet you can contact the administrator of the website and ask him/her to remove the post and in most cases you will find that they will oblige. That should be the end of the matter….. but If Google or any other search engine picks up on the url post/topic, then you will have a secondary problem. Although you will not be able to access the page, it will appear on search engine results for a possible period of up to 6 to 12 months. To solve this you have will have to contact the search engine and ask for the page to be removed. Usually if you are successful the offending page will be removed within 24 – 48 hours after this request.

A preventive measure to protect your online reputation is to create your own profile. This can be done simply by joining a online community. If your are purely concerned about your professional reputation then I recommend these site for professional profiles Work Connexions , Linkedin . Effectively, by creating your profile you are then in control of what is written about you. For example some minor comments that somebody might make in a blog or a forum would be unlikely to appear higher then your long standing profile with a high ranking community transparent page. Try it, search for your self on the internet now.