Google has long dominated the search engine industry, with well over 80% of the market share, sometimes 90%+. Other search engines with some semblance of a market share are Bing, Yahoo, MSN, and AskJeeves. Bing is considered the main competitor because of its backing from Microsoft and its new partnership with Facebook. However, Yahoo, MSN, and AskJeeves have proven that they have staying power too.

What Bing has that AskJeeves, MSN, and Yahoo do not–is the backing of Microsoft. This means that they have been able to invest copious amounts of money in advertising. The last couple of months have seen commercial after commercial on television introducing consumers to Bing.

Being able to put your brand in front of consumers on such a consistent basis is definitely an advantage in the industry of search engines. Will Bing be able to break the hold that Google has on the market? We’ll see I guess. Google reputation management will be effected by such changes.

TripAdvisor has a near riot on its hands–over 400 hotels and restaurants have indicated that they are likely to join a defamation lawsuit against TripAdvisor that alleges its reviewing system allows for defamatory content to be posted. The self-proclaimed world’s biggest travel site is getting into a lot of trouble for its reviewing practices.

The initiative is being led by an online reputation management firm.

KwikChex.com co-founder Chris Emmins told Caterer and Hotelkeeper magazine that his company would launch what he termed a ‘group defamation action’ against TripAdvisor, after its members in the hotel and restaurant sector highlighted that they were fed up with what they alleged were ‘unfair’ or ‘false’ reviews on the site.

This could have major consequences for how reputation management is handled online. It is understandable why these companies want so badly to have bad reviews removed from the Internet. For a small establishment, one review about having a a cockroach infestation can be incredibly damaging to the long term future of the business. It can be disastrous for a small company–but also for a large company that is in a competitive market.