“Essentially overnight all of the tools that we utilized didn’t work. Google even went so far as to remove both Brand.com and Reputation.com from its search engine.” – Rich Gorman, Brand.com founder.
After making headlines in 2013 for its $500K purchase of the domain name Brand.com, the company formerly known as Reputation Changer is calling it quits. The Chapter 7 filing lists $1.9 million in debts and $104K in assets, not including the more than $200,000 in pending lawsuits against the company.
Company founder Rich Gorman blames the failure of the company’s transition into content marketing from reputation management, citing a change in Google’s policy for reputation management companies as a barrier to the company’s success. “Essentially overnight all of the tools that we utilized didn’t work,” Gorman told Technical.ly Philly. “Google even went so far as to remove both Brand.com and Reputation.com from its search engine.”
The court will hold a meeting of creditors to determine who gets paid and who doesn’t. As far as the domain name, the company reportedly sold it for $300K prior to the bankruptcy as well as its content marketing website News Headquarters for $10K. No word on how this will play into the bankruptcy. It was also reported that former President and COO of the company Mike Zammuto took some of the staff of the company with him to a new venture, Chaikin Analytics.
