Mumbai: The companies have sought out for online reputation management as a measure for a complete clean up of the blogs with negative content that affect them. These 'crazy blogs' as firms term them has become a damaging factor and the companies have to fritter large amounts to clean up their image.

So, this online reputation management industry has emerged, which is currently a Rs.200 crore industry in India. Although it is a new sector in India, globally, this is part of the paid search industry - that is, firms getting paid for every search you do - that stands at around $18 billion. It helps the firms to clean up the negative content ensuring a safety to their image. One of the online reputation manager firm Value Pitch CEO CH Venkataramana said, "The guys who do it are faceless and nameless people - maybe from competition or disgruntled employees or even pranksters - trying to malign companies. On the net, these blogs have mini-newspaper status and crop up on every search, even after a decade." Apart from the nameless faces there are also "cribbing websites" like mouthshut.com, complaintboard.com and customercomplaint.com, through which content of a defamatory nature are also put up on the web. As reported by Business Standard, when a search for a company is done on the web, blogs with negative content appears on the first page, if not as the first search option.

As a solution to the negative impact that is put by these remarks, Communicate 2, Managing Director Vivek Bhargava said, "The first thing is to identify the source and if possible to pull the site down with the creator's permission. If not, these companies create more content to confuse the search engine, so that the crazy blog doesn't come up on the first page."

In India, a considerable amount of malicious content has also cropped up on the web on the issues between the Ambani brothers, the Wadia-Danone fight over the brands owned by Britannia, the tussle between Austral Coke and Gujarat NRE and the Bajaj family. So, some of the companies that has come up for the clean-up are like eBrandz, Communicate2, Value Pitch and Id8lab, among others, are offering this service. eBrandz CEO Milind Mody said, "Companies are spending crores of rupees to promote their brand and yet a single high-ranking negative blog can destroy their reputation. For example an earlier campaign on the net alleging use of Sodium Laureth Sulfate (a chemical that allegedly causes cancer) had raised doubts about the reputation of shampoo brands like Clear, Fructis, Palmolive and O'real."