PR agencies use fake profiles to drive bad news from public’s view
Celebrities, blue-chip companies and tourist attractions are using a new breed of PR company to hide secrets and damaging stories in Google search results. Celebrities, blue-chip companies and tourist attractions are using a new breed of PR company to hide their secrets and damaging press stories in Google search results.
Online “reputation management” agencies promise to suppress negative search results by driving them down the rankings. They typically use thousands of social networking profiles — set up using false names and operated using computer software to simulate the behaviour of a real person — to talk about and link to more positive results, pushing them above the negative stories.
The agencies do not identify their clients for fear of undoing the work they have carried out, but an investigation by The Times has discovered several cases.
Three public figures — an author and a Conservative politician, both of whom had extramarital affairs, and a married actor who paid a prostitute for sex — have approached agencies in the past week to help to keep their identities secret.
A further three — two actors and a prominent sportsman — have paid up to £20,000 a fortnight to use the services in the past six months.
Woburn Safari Park, owned by the Duke of Bedford, used an agency in Hertfordshire to hide press accounts of a damning government report that alleged animal mistreatment.
Google uses a complicated algorithm taking into account dozens of criteria to rank results for a search term, but one of the key factors is the number of links that a web page has from other websites.
Reputation management agencies work to improve the popularity of positive or irrelevant results, pushing them above those that are negative. As more than 90 per cent of users look only at the first Google results page, and only a tiny fraction go beyond the third page, well-hidden results are seldom read.
Although the media are gagged from reporting the names of many celebrities who have obtained injunctions, their identities are frequently the subject of fervent speculation online. The identities of several prominent individuals who have allegedly taken out gagging orders are visible online to anyone typing pertinent search terms into Google, and some have hired agencies to combat this.
Chris Angus, the 30-year-old founder of Warlock Media, confirmed that the company had recently been employed by two actors and a sportsman who had been granted injunctions, charging between £10,000 and £20,000 a fortnight.
He said that his work had been “incredibly successful”, adding: “If you put their names into Google you won’t find reference to their injunctions. You can’t stop an event happening, but you can stop it being seen. You can make sure that if it does appear in Google or Twitter it is completely suppressed and crushed.”
Chris Emmins, co-founder of Kwikchex, said he had been approached in the past week by three celebrities who panicked after seeing how quickly the footballer Ryan Giggs’s name had been spread online.
The company turned down the work “on principle”, but the three men — an actor, an author, and a Conservative politician — all wanted to stop the fact they had obtained injunctions over extramarital affairs being spread online. The politician “was also hoping it would help keep it from his wife”, Mr Emmins said.
Tourist attractions are particularly susceptible to damaging press reports and reviews online. In June last year, several newspapers published stories about Woburn Safari Park, in Bedfordshire, reporting the results of an inspection by government vets.
Inspectors from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had visited the safari park and their report criticised it for keeping lions in a “very crowded” overnight pen for 18 hours a day during the winter.
The newspaper articles also revealed that the park had moved its sea lions after an internal report found that chlorinated water was causing ulcers on their eyes, leaving one in such pain that it was biting the wooden sides of the pool. A bull elephant was found to be housed in an unsafe enclosure from which it had recently escaped and which had “potentially disastrous consequences” for staff and visitors.
A few weeks after the stories were published, the park hired the services of Keith Griggs who runs ReputationManagement. me, The Times can disclose.
On his website, he described how he started worked for “a wildlife park” in July last year, when three of the first ten search results for the park were news articles about the allegations. Within a week there were no longer any links to critical stories on the first page of results. A few months later there was only one negative report in the first five search result pages.
Woburn Safari Park admitted using the reputation management service, saying it felt that the articles had “unfair and inaccurate” information. The park has opened a lion house and the local council said it was happy that the park management “continues to work with us to ensure that Woburn Safari Park meets the requirements of the Zoo Licensing Act as well as health and safety matters with the premises”.
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