This online reputation management case study is looking at the impact of a social media backlash on website and other entities when online reputation is actually not managed. Results will be updated as the story unfolds.
Online Reputation Management | Timeline of the story
On April 9th 2021, Vice Asia published an article entitled “These People Were Arrested by the Khmer Rouge and Never Seen Again”. This piece was about the work of a colorist from Mayo Co Ireland named Matt Loughrey (ML) whose main business is to provide image restoration services online.
According to the artist, his goal was to humanize the victims of the Khmer Rouge Genocide by colorising some black and white archive pictures. He said this work was commissioned by the victims’ families. These pictures are the property of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh.
One day after the story was published, a social media backlash started on Twitter by a tweet from John Vink, showing original S21 photos with the altered ones: 3 of the photos were altered beyond coloring as Matt Loughrey added a smile to the victims.
A growing list of URL’s carrying negative stories started to appeared online from local to international newspapers with very high authority domains such as Reuters, BBC, CNN, New York Times.
Publications continued even after Vice pulled out their story on April 11th and published a weak editorial on April 12th. The peak of publications was reached on April 12th. Vice issued a stronger apology on April 16th.
Note: It is worth noting that none of these stories linked directly to the My Colorful Past website so did not act as backlinks.
What Is Online Reputation Management?
Online Reputation Management, also known as ORM, is part of digital marketing efforts for a brand, business, or person to put a positive spin about their products or services online. Reputation management can be integrated in a long-time SEO strategy to monitor and manage the properties that define an online reputation.
How to perform an Audit of Your Online Reputation?
A ORM’s audit is a bit different that a normal SEO audit: the first step in a e-reputation audit is to list all assets that belong to the brand or the person. These assets or properties can be one or several websites, a Web 2.0 like Blogger, a YouTube channel, a Facebook or Instagram account, a publishing platforms like Medium.
URL’s that affect the person or the brand in a negative way have to be listed as well. It can be helpful as well to look at the main website and analyze its strengths and weaknesses.
Business destroyed by social media
In extreme cases such as a social media backlash, the negative impact of social media on business is very strong and it explain how can a reputation can be ruined by social media in days.
Online Reputation Case Study | Free ORM Tools
It is important when following a developing story like that to track the different assets online and look closely at the evolution of the SERP to see what Google is rewarding: i.e what urls will be displayed on page 1 and look at their evolution with time. We will use Google Alerts to be informed about the latest news as well as Google Trends.
We also used Social Searcher to keep up to date with the mention of Matt Loughrey on the different platforms online (web and social media). To check the domain authority and the type of backlinks we will use the Moz Bar. SERP tracking is done with serprobot.
Online Reputation Management |Digital Assets
Here is the list below of Matt Loughrey’s assets (along with the Moz domain authority DA) we found including the main website around the brand my colorful past based exclusively on the business of image restoration .
The website itself has a limited content with a poor onpage SEO. In addition its is build around WIX which is not an advantage for SEO. The instagram page ranks actually higher than the website.
This list is to be expected for an visual artist composed of a website and several accounts on social media as Facebook, Instagram and Youtube.
- https://web.facebook.com/mycolorfulpast/ (DA 96)
- https://www.mycolorfulpast.com/ (DA 23)
- https://www.rte.ie/author/1162813-matt-loughrey/ (DA 87)
- https://www.instagram.com/my_colorful_past/ (DA 93)
- https://twitter.com/mycolorfulpast (DA 94)
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ5DyLhvxIRKf_Rhzfhj4dw (DA 100)
- https://www.boredpanda.com/author/mycolorfulpast/ (DA 90)
ML lost quickly his facebook and Twitter account on 12.04.2021 so just one day after the blowback. He managed so far to keep his Instagram account but comments are limited comment and pictures related to this story and other controversial pictures such as the one from Czeslawa Kwoka, a young victim of the concentration camp of Auschwitz were removed.
Online Reputation Case Study | Effect of Social Media Backlash
Two things ca potentially works on opposite way and influence the ranking of the main website and other assets on the page 1 of Google:
During a social media backlash, highly authoritative news’ websites are quickly ranking on the first page pushing down the main website and other assets to page 2. It is likely as well that URL’s carrying a positive story will be pushed down as well.
On the other hand, social media signals can potentially boost the ranking of a website with a search “Matt Loughrey” as this will be mentioned thousand of times during a short period of time and people will visit the main website. As expected as visible on Google Trends below, the search “Matt Loughrey” peaked after the Vice story and faded within a week.
Google trends evolution before and after Vice publication
In most cases, the stories were published with no link to ML’s website so no backlinks were created.
Online Reputation Management | Findings (updated)
MONTH 1
The main website went up on the page 1 of Google following the social media backlash from #5 to #3.
Matt Loughrey reputation was seriously impacted with up to 8 negative stories on page 1 with the query “matt loughrey”.
ML lost both his Facebook and Twitter accounts. All content was removed from his YouTube account.
SERP is not stable yet: Reuters and New York Times stories are doing the so-called Google dance.
Google seems to give preference to stories coming from Irish newspapers as they tend to stay longer on page 1.
Vice Asia apologized for the story but not ML.
MONTH 2
The main website is still on the top of Google page #1 taking both position #2 and #3.
Matt Loughrey reputation is still seriously impacted with half of page 1 covered with negative stories.
Facebook and Twitter accounts are still closed. Instagram is active again. YouTube still has no content.
SERP is much stable than last month with three very stable pages from Ireland always on page 1. We can confirm Google gives the preference to stories coming from Irish newspapers.
Matt Loughrey still did not apologize and no reputation management was done.
MONTH 3
The main website starts to go down and now ranks at #3 and #4 in google.com. Instagram account stills ranks on position with the request “Matt Loughrey”.
7 out of 10 results of page #1 are covering negative stories.
Matt Loughrey still did not apologize and the petition on change.org is still online and ranks on page 1.
MONTH 6
The main website ranks now at #3 on google.com, still riding on the initial boost from the original social media backlash.
ML’s Instagram account still ranking #1 with the request “Matt Loughrey”. 5 out of 10 results of page #1 are negative stories. Interestingly enough, although ML’s facebook account was disabled 6 months ago few days after the Vice publication, it has been indexed again by Google and ranks on page 1.
To this day, Matt Loughrey did not apologize and operates via its website and Instagram account.