Reputation management is a topic that is discussed quite frequently on our blog and is a topic that Nan and Simon have often spoken about at conferences.

Many companies have reputation management issues. How they react to these issues will determine the overall impact it will have on their organization. Some companies are proactive, some are reactive, and still others are either oblivious or have no idea what they should be doing regarding reputation management problems.

University of Phoenix is an example of an organization that has to constantly deal with these types of issues. Being such a large university, they are bound to have disgruntled students. But, the real problem arises when these disgruntled students decide to take action. This is when it can potentially become a major reputation management issue. University of Phoenix did face a serious reputation management problem when the site www.uopsucks.com ranked on the first page of the Google SERPs for the keywords “university of phoenix”.

When prospective students see a site like this they are bound to have second thoughts as to whether this is the right online university for them. University of Phoenix has diligently worked to push this negative site off the first page and have been successful in accomplishing that goal.

This is not the case, however, with Capella University. When you do a search for “capella university” the number two result is for www.capellauniveristy.org. That seems innocent enough until you see the title and description.

The result is that they now have a huge reputation management problem on their hands. It makes you wonder how many prospective students they are losing because of that site. We may not be aware of the actual quality of the education at Capella University or how they treat their students, but www.capellauniversity.org is definitely giving them a black eye whether it is justified or not.

For their sake, hopefully they are aware of this issue and have begun to take the necessary steps to repair their reputation. Only time will tell and if the site is in fact truthful, they have a much more difficult task at hand than just pushing negative sites down in the rankings.

Filed under: Reputation Management on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 by Nate Linnell | No Comments
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