BluShark Digital 0:00
Welcome to the SEO Insider with your host Seth Price, founder of BluShark, taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.
Seth Price 0:10
Welcome everybody back for another edition of the Insider. Today we are honored to have with us Rich Rudy, who is joining us from Florida today. Rich has been attached to the legal space for many years, and excited to hear about Captain Compliance and many things he’s done in reputation management. Welcome, Rich.
Rich Ruddie 0:29
Hey, thank you for having me.
Seth Price 0:30
So, Rich, you know we first connected over the whole reputation management world, and it is one that fascinates me. You know, you know, somebody with a digital marketing agency. I was never brave enough to go into it because it seemed that to do this right, there were some pretty murky waters that people entered into. Tell me a little bit about the evolution of reputation management because it’s to me, it’s just a fascinating space.
Rich Ruddie 0:57
Yeah, it definitely is an interesting space, and like the evolution of the industry started with a guy, actually Michael Furtick, out in California. He was in Stanford and said, “There’s got to be a way to fix things up and online. And the initial idea was, if you had something bad online or something you didn’t like, whether it was a bad review on Yelp or a Google or MapQuest review, even as far back as the industry goes, you would be able to hire the reputation defenders, and then go ahead and contact individually companies and say, “Hey, can you remove or can you fix this? And they found that kind of wasn’t as scalable. And then what happened was it just became a blend of like what’s called reverse SEO, and that’s where you’re creating lots of good content to push down sometimes unwanted or false or narratives that you necessarily might not want to have online, like there might be a competitor comparative comparative page online about your law firm, and you say, “Hey, I’d much rather have our Yelp listing or a news article or a bio page. So that’s kind of where it’s evolved to, where it became more of a little bit more of a scalable sort of operation versus hand calling individuals or businesses and saying, “Hey, can you fix this or can you remove that? And
Seth Price 2:09
which is always sort of the first, right? In life, whether it’s a bad review on Google or anything, the first thing is just, “Hey, can we can you get this down? That’s but you find that that’s not always a yes. You know, the reverse SEO is not for the faint of heart. I mean that is a an expensive process, generally very time-consuming. We had a client that I remember at the law firm. This was a criminal defense client, a very unique name, and their story went viral beyond viral. Every single news outlet in the world did a story on, and the day he was found not guilty, zero. So the only thing out there with a unique name was that, and it was one of those life moments where I’m like, you nobody could afford to contact every place that it was on, and you know how, like very often, like the AP wire stuff comes down after a few months. This stuff didn’t come back; it was down. It was too salacious. And my only advice was, he was a young enough guy. It’s like change your name because there’s no way that this name is ever going to be protected. You know, it could ever be clean. No, no amount of money could ever fix it. What’s your most challenging reputation management situation that you faced?
Rich Ruddie 3:25
Oh wow! I I mean I we had everybody from Steven Seagal contacting us and saying, “Hey, I need help. This is before the the Me Too stuff, so it was maybe a potential. It was something. There were so many crazy rumors and stuff. I mean, Roman Polanski worked with him and and his his agent out in Hollywood actually said there’s some things he wants to set the record straight and whatnot and that was extremely challenging making fan pages things like that and some things like that just you you try and chip away at it and you realize hey there’s there’s too much here and even if you want to say and share your story and create fan pages and things like that. Just like the example you just shared, like some things are just not possible. So some things are just they don’t go away. And I don’t remember there used to be a site called Ripoff Report, and anybody could go and make calls.
Seth Price 4:13
I remember it.
Rich Ruddie 4:14
And they hid behind the Communications Decency Act. So they would say, “Hey, anybody who opposes something, we’re not liable for it. And we would go to conferences and share, like, “Look, you could go out tomorrow and write the craziest and most false, defamatory stuff about your competitor, and this website will not take it down no matter what, and it would rank really well. And then one day, I guess somebody at Google must have had their own personal attack or something that said, “You know, why does this site rank so well?
Seth Price 4:40
Well, I I always say that if you want to take some down a website, get them featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. There was the eyeglass store in New York with the bad reviews. I don’t know if you remember that. That was it was famous for awful reviews, but it ranked top because the Google algorithm at the time was was based on the number. Review is not the score, and so they’re like, yeah, maybe we have to change that. And then that was featured in the New York Times. Then there was the bug shot photos that, for years, particularly in Florida,
Rich Ruddie 5:09
yep,
Seth Price 5:10
were dominant. And eventually, it got an article about the where people were shaking down. Yeah, yeah. I haven’t seen that be too much of an issue of late. And so, you know as that’s evolved, you know there’s a world that I know is is not your world, but I wonder if you could you know speak to there are people out there that will contact you and say for X dollars a Google, Bing, Yelp Glassdoor review could be removed. What goes on behind that murky curtain?
Rich Ruddie 5:44
Yeah, it’s a combination. Sometimes they actually have a contact at those at those places, and that contact is facilitating and helping them either guide or tell them the process, or maybe there’s some money under the table to get it down. Or in some cases, it’s just flagging and knowing the right way to submit that a review is either false, defamatory, wrong, or just getting it so it’s flagged. And sometimes things are so blatantly false, and you can flag it, and they won’t do anything. And it’s just it’s the wild wild west. And that’s one of the reasons that I’m glad I don’t deal with that industry anymore, and the transitions more stable and
Seth Price 6:22
right because it appeared to me like three different categories as an outsider was you had your just the algorithm like somebody figures out if you come in this door this one is listened to and you have a shot the other is just how to actually make that argument at scale and the third is somebody the fix is in, and just just a fascinating space that you know again as just as somebody loves game you know game theory just you know that that stuff really fascinating. But we had one bad Glassdoor review back in the day that stuck for years. It was really damaging, and we know who did it. It’s awful, but it was for some reason the Google algorithm loved it. And when those things happen, it’s it’s it’s cringy. But you know, eventually, when somebody puts false statements in it, you know, and I think the key is if you can, if it’s serious enough, getting to the point where somebody is beyond a bot is looking at it because very often that person like, yeah, and the flip of a switch and you’re in good shape.
Rich Ruddie 7:24
Exactly, exactly. Yeah.
Seth Price 7:26
So look, you know, very excited about Captain Compliance. Many lawyers out there are getting crazy threatening letters, and there’s Captain Compliance sort of being that stalwart in the space. Tell us what you’re seeing right now. Is California law keeping you very, very busy?
Rich Ruddie 7:44
The California law is keeping us very busy and keeping both plaintiffs’ attorneys busy because they’re filing, and then keeping other attorneys, even plaintiffs’ attorneys, busy because they’re getting hit with these demand letters. And they’re saying, “What the heck, right? I have Facebook ads running on my site. Like that’s how I generate business. What what is illegal about that? I didn’t know it was wrong, and what’s happening is is there’s an old wiretapping statute and law from 1967 called the California Invasion of Privacy Act, and that’s being weaponized and used to say that anybody running any sort of ad targeting and ad technology that it’s an illegal invasion of privacy and it’s spying on them. So if you’re on X Y Z personal injury website and then you go on Facebook or Instagram and you see ads for them, you’re like, okay, why am I seeing that? And what’s happening is a few plaintiffs have have realized we can go out, we can file claims, and then the cost to defend this, and then even if they do defend it, there’s a high likelihood that the judge is going to rule against them or the arbitrator, and they’re going to end up paying out. So they’re finding as a nice little honey hole. And thanks to companies like us, Captain Compliance, we’ve developed privacy software that helps companies both be compliant with these laws and also be very defensible. So if they get one of these demand letters, we’re able to showcase. Here’s an audit, and it’s happened with a handful of firms who have come to us and said, “Hey, like we’re running your software. We got one of these demand letters. They’re generated, ironically, via AI most of the most of the time, and then we provide an audit, and they’re like, ‘Okay, we’re going to go. You know, fish elsewhere is kind of what’s happening in the space at the moment.
Seth Price 9:19
Gotcha. You know, we we’ve seen this a lot. There was a there was an there was a world of this. I don’t know if this was part of your world, where there was a guy in California who’s coming after law firms for stolen IP, like stolen photos, not stolen photos, but photos used without rights. And there was there was one. It was like the keys on a piano, something very, very generic. If you if you remember that, and you know we did some some digging on it back in the day, and what we found was much of the time, the photos that they were sending, they sent these big packets as if it was a they were about to file. Federal suit, but that the photos they were claiming had infringed were in fact public use, and so it was just a numbers game that if they could get six grand from enough people, there’s a viable business there. How much of what you’re seeing on the California piece is that? Is there real liability, and how much you know, understanding that sometimes it doesn’t matter because if the cost of defending is more than six grand, some people are just paying the six grand or whatever number they’re throwing out. How much of this, you know, using this this old statute has legs if somebody were to fight it versus you know, it’s it’s it’s going to come to an end at some point. The question is: Are you going to pay to get there?
Rich Ruddie 10:42
Yeah. So there’s definitely a lot of similarities, and if you’re familiar with the ADA compliance lawsuits, that’s what
Seth Price 10:51
I was another another great one.
Rich Ruddie 10:53
Yep. So ADA, TCPA, image copyright, and privacy. Right. There’s different landmines, and then you got a whole business you got to run, and then there’s HR and everything else, right? So I like to say there’s landmines everywhere in business, and we protect you against the privacy ones. The privacy ones have real teeth. There are fines, and they’re coming from even the AG in California and other states around other privacy statutes. This the reason why the one we’re talking about today is so common, is because it provides for a private right of action. And there’s talks because there’s one guy who came out as a vexatious litigator because he’s filed, sent 1000s of these demand letters. He’s filed only about 29 of these actual cases, but he’s sent out 1000s of demand letters. And then the people who you know play hardball, or when I fight him, he’s they’re going to court, and about half the time they’re finding in his favor. So, so even if you fight it and you win, you’re still losing. You’re paying time and money, and there’s half of them are fighting, and they’re losing not only time and money, but they’re losing in the courts too. Right, the judges in about half of these cases are saying, “You’re telling me that you’re spying on this gentleman, and you he went to your website or this plaintiff, and you are following him around the internet without their permission, and that’s essentially what’s happening. So I asked a California privacy regulator at the privacy conference what they thought about the MetaPixel and the litigation, and their viewpoint was this is a disgusting technology and the way it spies and invades people’s privacy is not okay. So when you have regulators talking like that, and I come from a marketing background like you, so it’s it’s interesting to hear from the other perspective. So you do have judges who feel like that, and then you have business owners who are like, “Hey, I’m just a smaller, medium-sized business owner trying to get by, run my business, run some ads. My website, you know, designer put this on. We do, you know, a nominal amount of revenue a year. Like I don’t have to deal with this, and that’s and that’s the sad part. It’s hitting a lot of those people.
Seth Price 12:51
How much of this is California centric? If you if you did no business in California, does that change the story?
Rich Ruddie 12:57
You would have to block a visitor from being able to reach your website, who’s in California, but then there’s more, right? More landmines. Florida, where I am, has a Florida wiretapping statute, and there’s another sort of similar plaintiffs, both plaintiffs’ counsel and pro se plaintiffs that are starting to pop up here. Then Pennsylvania’s got one, Michigan’s got one. So there’s different locations, and then there’s a federal law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and we have a now client who was talking about onboarding, didn’t do anything, and then they got hit with a $5 million class action lawsuit over a privacy violation, all because they were running this technology and they were in healthcare, so it triggered a ECPA violation, and they had a class action lawsuit that they had to deal with, and I said, you know, for a nominal amount of money, we would have saved you this giant headache. And then they ended up signing up, of course. But so it doesn’t really matter if you are in California, if you do business in California, it’s where the plaintiff and person is, and then there’s other statutes that are being weaponized. So I don’t see this going away anytime soon, you know. And
Seth Price 14:03
some of it’s frustrating. Take the ADA piece. There’s there’s not a safe harbor. It’s not like if you do this, you are now compliant. And that’s I think the most frustrating thing is that if you’re gonna, to me, go on the soapbox for saying if you’re gonna make a law, at least give some. If you want to be like Europe and say, hey, you have to opt in to be able to great, but the the idea that it’s not clear to the business owner just seems crazy in the sense that you’re just creating a another world of litigation where you know take the ADA piece, you know the good thing is much of SEO, which I know you you love and have done for years makes you more ADA compliant, right? Because all the different meta descriptions and meta tags and everything you’re doing is making you more and more ADA friendly. That said, it’s not like you know even with some of the great plugins that are out there, there’s not some magic wand that you can do to sort of make you bulletproof. You can make it more likely that somebody’s not going to come after you because you’ve used some of these plugins and done best practices. But what what are your thoughts on that? The idea that there really isn’t a safe harbor for business.
Rich Ruddie 15:12
Yeah, it’s it’s it’s it’s really tough to be fully compliant. It’s it’s and most even talking lawyers, they say, look, we want to go four miles per hour with the speed limit. We don’t want to go 50 miles per hour with the speed limit because we know it’s like it’s hard to make all this stuff function. It it’s it’s tough. It’s very difficult to be fully compliant if you want to have a website built out with everything that’s needed for ADA, and it would cost a lot of money. I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen those quotes of 15, 20k or so for like the ADA, like work. Right,
Seth Price 15:48
but if you’re using one of these great plugins that do exist that are pretty darn good, you know, it’s the idea is like everything else. Like I grew up in New York City, not every, but not every subway station is ADA compliant. They have shuttles that run around and do that. Is that ideal? No, but there’s a cost benefit to society. Like if they put an elevator into every station retrofitting, the city would have no money for anything else potentially. And so that there there needs to be something where you have done enough. Whereas commonly understood that if you’re running a shuttle bus from station to station, that you know, or going frankly in many places like DC, they come to your door and get you rather than having to get to a metro stop. You know what what is enough so that you’re not just playing a game, but rather you know improving somebody’s life, and that that’s the part that gets frustrating-is that there are so many examples of really bad actors, and I think that very often the the people who, as you call it, weaponized it, are not necessarily making any better for people. They’re just trying. They’re just making it better for themselves. And it’s figuring you need you need somebody who’s you know for most people, if it’s a nominal amount, you pay it and you move on. You need somebody who’s pissed off enough on the other side to sort of say, “Hey, this is ridiculous. Challenge it and try to get it changed.
Rich Ruddie 17:10
Yeah, and I’ve and I’ve connected with a an attorney who’s an ADA compliance attorney, legally blind, and he’s like, “When I go up against these sort of you know litigators and and plaintiffs, and they see me and and I share that I’m using a screen reader and I can see the and I can read the page even though I can’t see it. They just they walk away and I’m like, we need more people like him to step up and and kind of fight back to try and put an end to this weaponized sort of litigation and frivolous kind of claims.
Seth Price 17:43
Well, let’s let’s you know land the plane here, you know, on the compliance issue, sort of because it’s sort of the in one sense it’s the PhD of your of your career, seeing this this this new this new frontier. What do law firms need to know about the space? It sounds very you know scary and wonky, and yes, here’s a product to do it. But what is it underlying? If somebody is not like, what are the order of operations things that people should be focused on? Is it the is it pixels? Like, what are the things that if you are not playing with that you’ll you know put yourself in better stead? And some of the ones that you as a business know you need to, but are going to you know you need to be particularly careful with because,
Rich Ruddie 18:25
yep, great great question. So if if a business is doing has a website that’s doing any sort of tracking, whether it’s Google Analytics, whether it is session replay where they see where the mouse is moving on the screen, like they need to provide the ability to consent in and out. So that’s where those cookie consent banners that Captain Compliance makes comes into play. It’s one of the only ways that you could actually toggle on and off. So giving users consent is like number one, right? And disclosure. So you want to be able to let them opt in, opt out. You want to have proper privacy notices and disclosure. So if you’re doing X, Y, Z in your in with people’s data, you just needed to disclose it and let them know when you’re going to a contact form. Having that checkbox saying we will process your data with these uses in line with our privacy policy. Those things are really important. Again, going back to disclosure, and then giving people the right and the ability to opt out, which is another law. And it’s not just these laws. There’s also state requirements, like California’s got the California Consumer Privacy Act, and there’s 22 other states with different levels of privacy laws that have certain requirements. And one of those is letting users or data subjects, as they call them, let themselves be removed. So, and that’s actually how I got in the business. If if you as Seth Price go to a business and you say, I want to be removed from the Target database. I’ve been shopping here, and now you’re sending me a bunch of mails about golf clubs and stuff. Like you know, I’m trying to spend less time on the golf course. Just for example, you can tell them, “Hey, remove me, delete me, and you won’t get those directed and targeted mailers from Target anymore. So. Those are certain things that our mechanisms and our software is able to do, and it’s part of the requirement with the different privacy laws.
Seth Price 20:06
How much of this is just morphing into what we see in Europe, where everybody has the the opt outs? Is that essentially where we’re headed, and we’re just sort of bridging the gap till we get there?
Rich Ruddie 20:14
Yeah, I don’t think we’re heading to a full opt out, but we’re heading to where the EU is least cohesive with GDPR, we’re a 22 and 23. If you count Florida, pieces of a puzzle that are all slightly different, where they have different laws, requirements, thresholds.
Seth Price 20:30
Right, but the whole that that’s one of those places in the U.S. that I just wish there was. You know, it’s I’ve seen this in different areas with labor law and other pieces, where like we have this United States of America, and I get states’ rights, but like to be able to do business, it’d be very nice to have people all opt into some agreement, as they did in Europe. You know, so that like if you’re going to say this is the level, great, but you’re not pretending to. And and I see this, you know, when you’re trying to figure out, you know, different laws around the state, around the country, as as people have employees everywhere, you would think this is me back on the soapbox that you know with you know that the idea that there is not universal law around the state for some of this stuff, I get there’s benefits to certain pieces, but like if if everybody bought into something, the ability to you know produce jobs, create things, you know, I think that it’s rare that you say Europe’s getting something right because they get so much wrong. That’s one of the few things that I feel like you know this this doing things collectively make makes some sense.
Rich Ruddie 21:43
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, Europe’s the most strict. I don’t think we’re going to go that level of strictness as a requirement, and it says it kills tracking, kills analytics, and we’ve had clients on all sides who say in in Europe we want to be this, and then we want the same functionality here in the U.S. and then they’ll say, “Wait, we’re getting no analytics. We’re getting this. I suggest because you’re you’re opted out, right? You’re following the EU law. If you want this, and you want you still want to have your cake and be able to eat it too, there’s certain things. So I don’t foresee that that happening because the I see the ad ad networks and people really stepping up. And Google was even talking about divesting from cookies and and deprecating it, and then they said it multiple times. Said you know cookies are here to stay and tracking and everything. So it’s too vital and core to their business. So I I see it not going to the strictness of Europe, but being like you said, like the labor law model here.
Seth Price 22:41
Very cool. Well, Rich, really appreciate your time, and this is exciting. Can’t wait to see you at one of the legal conferences and hear hear what’s next. I know whenever I speak to you, I learn a lot, but I also my head starts to to hurt because it’s like you know it’s one of those things that I had a lawyer years ago say you know to me you know there’s liability in everything you do, or you know, there’s risk in everything you do, even getting out of bed. So I’m glad there’s somebody out there looking over to try to make getting out of bed slightly less risky. So thank you so much for your time today.
Rich Ruddie 23:12
Yeah, thank you for having me.
BluShark Digital 23:14
Thank you for tuning in to the SEO Insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand’s online presence. Episodes are available to stream directly on BluShark Digital’s website.
