articles link to it . please introduce links to this page from related articles ; try the find link tool for suggestions . march 2015 brand.com formerly called reputation changer former type incorporation business industry public relations founded 2009 defunct 2015 headquarters philadelphia pennsylvania united states key people michael zammuto president 1 dave armon ceo 2 website http www.brand.com brand.com was an american online reputation and brand management company 3 4 based in philadelphia pennsylvania . 5 it was founded as reputation changer in 2009 . in 2013 it purchased the brand.com domain name for 500 000 and changed its name . the company provided internet search management creating positive web articles about its clients in order to have them overtake negative news and wikipedia profile management . contents 1 reputation changer 2 services 3 bankruptcy 4 see also 5 references 6 external links reputation changer edit the company was founded in september 2009 as reputation changer 6 with its headquarters in west chester pennsylvania . 5 the company began as an online reputation management company offering services to small businesses and individuals . 5 to help improve online reputations reputation changer created its own positive content about its clients in an attempt to force other less flattering articles about them down in google search results and thus cause criticisms to disappear . 7 though during this time the company had been accused of making false claims about the effectiveness of their services they company insisted that those claims are the result of rivals and not legitimate complaints . 8 this includes the hiding of negative user generated reviews for hotels and other commercial enterprises . 9 in november 2012 michael zammuto joined the company as president . 10 this led to some restructuring within the company including the june 2013 renaming of the company from reputation changer to brand.com . the re branding including the acquisition of the internet domain brand.com for 500 000 . 11 the company also moved its headquarters from west chester to philadelphia pennsylvania . 5 the company had 135 employees and worked with both small and large clients . 12 seattle city light hired brand.com to remove a 2008 seattle weekly story critical of their ceo jorge carrasco . brand.com created several blog posts to drown out critical stories including one at huffington post where the writer did not disclose conflict of interest subsequently leading to the article being removed . 13 14 ars technica reported that some of the websites that the stories were posted on appear to have been utterly fake . 15 in may 2014 seattle city light requested a refund from brand.com as they claimed the company did not deliver the services that were promised as the critical story still appeared high in google searches . 15 in september 2014 it was revealed that brand.com had received a penalty from google for potentially trying to game the system in increasing its own company s google rankings . the penalty was removed in late 2014 . it was also alleged that brand.com contacted online websites directly to ask the removal of negative articles about brand.com . 16 services edit brand.com offered brand management and reputation management services . 17 they reviewed the online presence of individuals and companies and provide action plans said to help control how information appears in search engines . 18 services also included suppression of negative reviews on sites like yelp or google reviews . 19 part of these services was the planned launch of brand.com s google eraser which claimed to expunge negative listings from a google search . at the time some stated that the process was unproven and that brand.com had not been transparent about its process claiming that their processes were proprietary . 20 in 2013 brand.com stated further that they would enact a de indexing action plan to permanently erase false or libelous information from major search engines as opposed to attempting to move the negative information further down in search results . 21 the process involved verifying that the information was false and then working with google yahoo and bing to de index the information . 22 the company created the command center platform through which clients could monitor the results of its advertising or reputation management efforts . 12 brand.com edited wikipedia on behalf of clients . 23 24 the company claimed on its website to have built an entire practice around creating managing and monitoring wikipedia . and offered to create a positive wikipedia page . 25 26 michael zammuto told quartz in 2013 that the company helps ensure that information on wikipedia is accurate not false or defamatory . 23 brand.com also charged clients to have journalists write news stories under their direction instead of having journalists independently select their own stories from news releases and claims that these news stories have appeared in news publications including cnn msnbc fox news the huffington post and forbes magazine . 27 bankruptcy edit having released most of its workers in 2014 brand.com filed for bankruptcy in 2015 . 28 see also edit brand management reputation management online reputation management references edit ensign rachel louise 14 may 2013 . the morning risk report from cyber lemons to lemonade . wall street journal . retrieved 18 november 2013 . brand.com company profile . linkedin . brand.com . retrieved 18 march 2015 . ha anthony june 21 2013 . thanks to a six figure purchase by reputation changer brand.com is a thing now . tech crunch . retrieved 25 june 2013 . adams susan 14 march 2013 . 6 steps to managing your online reputation . forbes . retrieved 18 november 2013 . a b c d key peter june 27 2013 . reputation changer now brand.com . bizjournals.com . retrieved 28 june 2013 . han nydia december 10 2012 . protecting your online reputation . abc action news 6 . retrieved 28 february 2013 . tasmin cave . the corporate pr industry s sneaky war on internet activism . fixing the reputations of reputation managers . february 2 2012 . brand.com helps hotels bury negative news . noble or sneaky . june 27 2013 . michael zammuto . philadelphia business journal . retrieved may 11 2013 . koetsier john 5 july 2013 . biggest domain sales of 2013 so far 500k for brand.com . venture beat . retrieved 18 november 2013 . a b brand.com helps manage its clients reputations online . december 10 2013 . city light hires online results firm to polish its ceo s image . seattle times . retrieved 12 october 2014 . huffington post pulls blog item tied to city light paid pr effort . huffington post . retrieved 12 october 2014 . a b . ars technica http arstechnica.com tech policy 2014 07 seattle utility wants 17500 refund after failure to scrub negative search results . retrieved 12 october 2014 . missing or empty title help why reputation manager brand.com had to manage its own heitner darren 20 august 2013 . sharapova to sugarpova why the name change would have been a silly business strategy . forbes . retrieved 18 november 2013 . davis daniaja 10 september 2013 . miley s downfall . huffington post . retrieved 18 november 2013 . daisyme peter 11 september 2013 . how brand.com reviews suppression helps boost online reputation . search engine journal . retrieved 18 november 2013 . brandyourself.com calls bs on brand.com s google eraser service . november 14 2013 . koetsier john 13 november 2013 . brand.com launches first systematic program to remove lies and libel from google . venture beat . retrieved 18 november 2013 . hong kaylene 13 november 2013 . brand.com launches a program for deleting false web pages on google yahoo and bing . the next web . retrieved 18 november 2013 . a b leo mirani 13 november 2013 . this company promises it can delete slanderous results from google for 7 500 and up . quartz . harvey chipkin 20 may 2013 . the other guy s social media . the wikipedia action plan manages monitors and helps control wikipedia pages for your brand . . brand.com . archived from the original on 2014 02 13 . brand.com 11 march 2013 . reputation changer offers new tools for building accurate authoritative wikipedia pages press release . prweb . newscred percolate brand.com scheme to alter digital content creation . may 20 2014 . http technical.ly philly 2015 05 22 rich gorman brand com bankruptcy external links edit brand.com retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title brand.com & oldid 743597256 categories search engine optimizationcompanies based in philadelphiainternet properties established in 2009reputation management companieshidden categories pages with citations lacking titlespages with citations having bare urlsorphaned articles from march 2015all orphaned articles navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search 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