What’s in a name? When it came to my own, it seemed not much. I am not a celebrity and my name is not exactly one which has any
particular significance other than being unusual. At least, that’s what I
thought until someone or something hijacked it to use it as their own
author name on some press releases distributed all over the Internet via
spam bots.
I found out about this by merely searching my name on Google. I was
trying to see whether Google was including my photo on pages with
appropriate SERPs. It was, but along with attributions for articles I
had written were some results for material I had not written with my
name preceded by the word “User.” Luckily, my photo was not.
See Google Results for Marilyn Bontempo
In a panic, I researched this issue to find that someone had chosen
to register my name on sites which allow posting of press releases
without any bona fide proof of authorship, apparently. Although the
material was not offensive in content, mostly about men’s footwear, the
writing was atrocious, as if it had been subjected to an online
translation service which substituted incorrect synonyms to add variety
to the text.
I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I have been so careful
to avoid using Facebook and other social sites to keep inappropriate
content from following me to the grave, courtesy of Google. I have been
industrious in trying to make sure my name is associated with subjects
pertaining to my area of expertise and content of which I can be proud.
Yet, for some mysterious reason, my name was chosen from the entire
universe of possibilities to grace this flawed press release on
countless sites to promote one company’s footwear for men.
“There Oughta Be A Law!”
Since I work with many lawyers and I am aware of identity theft
issues, copyright infringements, etc., I am well aware that I don’t have
much of a leg to stand on when it comes to prosecuting such a crime.
First of all, having researched a similar transgression a couple of
years ago, I realize it is impossible to identify the thief. Secondly,
there is no way to prove that there isn’t another person in the world
with exactly my name, as unique as my name is. Finally, unless I can
claim I have been damaged by this incident, it is not likely it would
qualify as a crime in any court of law, despite the blow to my ego and
black mark on my reputation as a writer.
In addition, the last thing I need is to spend my dwindling income on
paying a well-meaning lawyer I might hire to try to help me with this.
The odds of even reaching the offender are so remote that it is
ridiculous to even try. (I know this from a past attempt to locate
someone who had stolen an article I had written, verbatim, posting it on
some blog site with their name as author. I learned quickly that such
sites protect their posters with ambiguous disclaimers and avoid
confrontation of any kind with the only contact information available as
emails to nowhere.)
But for the sake of argument, let’s say we were to locate the
perpetrator, and even prosecute to the full extent of the law. There is
no guarantee that someone else totally unrelated may repeat this “crime”
in the future leaving me with much more dire circumstances with which
to contend. By using spam-bot distribution services, the problem could
be exponentially magnified in both intensity and ubiquity. What began as
a minor problem could become a never-ending battle costing me a fortune
in legal fees with the only evidence of evasive victory coming at the
steep price of online humiliation.
So, what are my alternatives? It had been my understanding that
Google and other search engines place a good deal of importance and
priority on the most recent of one’s contributions. This would imply
that as time passes, those older counterfeit attributions should lose
prominence in search results particularly if I were to take the
necessary steps to eradicate them.
How to Solve the Name-Hijacking Problem
While there is no quick fix to do this, there is a simple but tedious
solution at a relatively modest cost. It involves spending time to
create valuable new content with which to fill up the Internet. As fresh
material I have authored push these bogus attributions way down on the
list of search results, they will finally disappear into oblivion.
Unfortunately, after having again checked SERPs associated with just
my name, there at the bottom of page one are three of the fictitious
“User” attributions, preceded by correctly-attributed results for my own
material. On a mission to hunt down more of these false attributions, I
found no others on the following twelve pages of results but plenty of
attributions to lots of my newest and older work. Perhaps search engines
dedicate page one of SERPs to a general overview of all possible
variations on a theme whether true or not. I don’t know how else to
explain why those three “User” results appear on page one since their
dates originate approximately six months ago and I have submitted lots
of newer material since then. Could it be that page one is reserved for
the most popular of search results? Again, since I consult Google
Analytics on a regular basis and have direct access to how many visits
are made to all of my articles, my most popular articles do not reside
on page one of SERPs.
How Search Engines Prioritize SERPs
With further analysis, I now realize that the results on page one for
my name are indeed according to Internet popularity: site popularity,
not article popularity. They include my profile on the crowd-pleasing
sites of LinkedIn; SiteProNews; Google+; my own website blog (probably
because it is targeted by worldwide spam commenting bots more than any
other site on earth!); Facebook; as well as an article about me on a
major newspaper chain; my listing in a major white page directory; and
finally, the créme de la créme, the three fraudulent “User” sources from
no other than a “wiki” site for press release postings.
The day I first realized this problem was one of the worst days of my
life until I decided to take a walk to get away from my computer.
Suddenly it dawned on me that unless I am looking at SERPs on the
Internet, the “problem” doesn’t exist. Out in the fresh air, in the real
world, I was free of the shackles of Internet malice. Besides, I
thought, how many people would be searching specifically for my name?
And even if they were to investigate those fallacious attributions,
would they muddle through such boring entries about a subject so
uninspiring that they would come to any conclusion about writing so
deficient other than a result of poor editing or worse, a domineering
client?
If you are a writer, or a business owner, or anyone using the
Internet with your own name, you too could be targeted in this way. It
is our new reality and we’d better get used to it.
Marilyn Bontempo