How Jeffrey Epstein used search engine optimization (SEO) to bury news about his crimes

On December 11, 2010, Jeffrey Epstein was worried about what would happen if you Googled him. By this time Epstein He has already pleaded guilty Charged with soliciting prostitution with a child and was a registered sex offender, just a few days earlier Filmed in Central Park Walking with Prince Andrew.

Epstein emailed a colleague to complain. “The Google page is not good,” Epstein wrote, according to documents released by the House Oversight Committee last week. He also objected to payments worth tens of thousands of dollars, which appeared to have been made to “clean up” the results. “I have not yet received the full details of the payments. The results are what they are.”

Someone named Al Seckel — possibly the late partner of Epstein’s sister, Ghislaine Maxwell — responded later that evening and shared what he was seeing. The results included Epstein’s Wikipedia page, A New York Article in the magazine“,”jeffreyepsteinscience.comwebsite, a hair transplant surgeon with the same name, and a story that correctly describes him as a sex offender.

“This is before the next big sweep. I understand your point about ‘one thing is killing me,’ but the Daily Beast article is gone, and the others, including the mighty Huffington Post, are about to be postponed. And the outside stuff is at the forefront.”

Within the documents released last week, we see Epstein and his circle strategizing how to bury unflattering coverage of him on Google and elevate what they want – Search engine optimization To try to whitewash the reputation of a rich, gay man with powerful friends. Throughout the documents, Epstein and others discuss how to use technical SEO techniques to bump news articles off the first page of Google results, court reporters they see as more focused on business than Epstein’s crimes, and how to run a crisis PR machine to launder his digital presence. For those familiar with SEO, these strategies will seem familiar — they’re the same playbook used by everyone from restaurants to news publishers to companies that sell tennis shoes and photography services online. Everyone knows that Google search is the gateway to the Internet; Only this time, these same practices were deployed as a cover for perhaps the world’s most notorious child predator.

A few days after Epstein’s complaint, Sickel followed up with good news: all but one “negative” article — from Huffington Post — Stayed on the first page of results.

“The Huffington Post is very difficult to move, because it is so powerful, has millions of links to it, and loads huge new and original content on a daily basis with posting from outside readers,” Sickle wrote. “We were able to push it to the bottom of the page, like it was at the top.” Seckel discusses SEO tactics such as regularly adding new content to Epstein’s newly created charity website, “(promoting) other Jeffrey Epsteins,” having non-photo images at the top of Google Images, and manipulating search queries so that Google-suggested search terms are not “toxic.”

Many of these practices — posting new content regularly, or getting mentions in authoritative publications — are recognized by Google itself these days as a good SEO strategy. “I would say it’s mostly been a best practice,” says Rand Fishkin, a longtime SEO consultant and co-founder of the digital marketing company Moz. Edge. “There was a decent level of development, although it seemed to me that more could be done there, and quite possibly more work that was not discussed in the emails.”

One of the points in the documents related to Fishkin was allegations of manipulation of Epstein’s Wikipedia page. The weight that Google has given to Wikipedia in search rankings has ebbed and flowed over the years, but Fishkin says there was a period beginning somewhere between 2008 and 2010 where Wikipedia became “absolutely dominant” in the rankings.

In a December 2010 email, Sickel claimed an “important victory” over Wikipedia: “Headlines do not mention sex offenders or pedophiles. Instead, Philanthropy, Epstein Foundation, Promote Scientists,” he wrote, perhaps referring to the Wikipedia section headers on Epstein’s page. “We hacked the site to replace the image and caption, and now we have a completely different image and caption. This has been a huge success.”

It’s not clear what Sickle meant by “hack,” but Fishkin suggests that Epstein’s associates may have had contacts with Wikipedia editors, and may have paid them to edit his page. March 2020, Wikipedia Published a blog post Identify some of the Epstein page editing wars over the years that raised questions about paid editing; New York Times In 2019 I mentioned that Wikipedia editor with a username linked to Epstein king He went on an editing spree Starting in 2013 and exaggerated details about his charitable foundation. The Wikipedia article has proven its importance: According to A MIT report Regarding Epstein’s ties to MIT’s Media Lab, employees at the institution cited Wikipedia while debating whether they should accept Epstein’s money. The MIT report notes that at the time, the Wikipedia entry included details about Epstein’s crimes but also “included statements that could be read as undermining the strength of some of the allegations.”

“These Epstein-linked accounts were not enough to prevent the Wikipedia article on Epstein from alerting MIT to Epstein’s crimes, but they watered down the story enough that MIT was able to ignore the alert long enough to accept Epstein’s money,” a Wikipedia editor wrote in the blog post. “Wikipedia editors did a good job in a difficult situation.” Wikipedia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wikipedia’s own assessment does not cover the months leading up to the December 2010 emails, however Public record of modifications to the site Offers some hints. One account Editing began in October 2010, making dozens of changes to Epstein’s page including… Add paragraphs of detail And about his charity Removed the “American Sex Offenders” category from the pageand Change the word “girls” to “escorts”. The first edit the account made was to Al Seckel’s Wikipedia page; Editor added a link to Interview between Epstein and Sickle.

By March 2011Epstein’s page contains two sections: “Life” and “Solicitation of Prostitution.”

The Epstein documents – with their bizarre, indecipherable writing style and surprising endings – are haunting as you learn about the depravity they represent. They’re also sometimes downright banal: In an exchange after the Google “sweep”, Epstein complained about the fees he was charged for search engine optimization (SEO) services. “I was never told there was a fee of 10,000 a month. I initially said the project would take $20…then another 10,000. Then another 10,000,” he wrote in one letter. Fishkin estimates that a job of this size would cost $100,000 initially, plus a five-figure monthly maintenance fee.

“The prices seemed too low to me,” Fishkin says. “Here’s a billionaire who’s supposedly concerned about his reputation as a pedophile, coming out in public and arguing over a few thousand dollars. Frankly, this impudence is crazy.”

Optimizing search results to fit the client’s narrative is standard practice for PR agencies – SEOs are employed to maintain a client’s reputation even when it is not riddled with scandal. In a document dated June 14, 2011, Public relations firm Osborne & Partners LLP He devises a game plan: reduce references to Epstein in US and UK tabloids, establish him as a “leading supporter of science and technology,” “clean up” Google, and put him in front of elite editors and writers.

Regarding Google content control, the document stated: “We have hired an excellent team of Israeli experts for other clients, and there are many companies that claim to be able to improve results in this way but fail to achieve this.” “I can’t overstate the importance of this, because it’s the primary source of information about you for many people.”

Later that year, in December 2011, Epstein’s publicist, Christina Galbraith, emailed a summary of tactics for removing bad press from the top of Google results, and recommended hiring Reputation, a company that advertises services to help companies manage their online reputation. Among the steps Galbraith mentioned: “eliminating bad information using virality and ownership algorithms; and redirecting the way Google sequences your information (relinking it to positive content).”

As for reputation services, Galbraith told Epstein that it would take about a year to “establish” and would cost $10,000 to $15,000 a month. Reputation did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the company ended up working with Epstein.

Epstein and his colleagues also flooded Google with great articles, taking advantage of the often poorly vetted networks of contributors found in many digital media outlets. Stories — It has yet to be removed New York Times I inquired about them in 2019 – It followed the rules of the game set out in newly released documents promoting Epstein’s business and scientific interests.

Epstein’s efforts to clean up his online reputation appear to have worked, at least for a time: In Story 2019 by New York Timesthe president of Bard College defended accepting more than $100,000 in donations from Epstein. “If you looked up Jeffrey Epstein on the Internet in 2012, you would see what we all saw,” Leon Botstein said. times — The “ex-con who did well on Wall Street” was a friend of the Clinton family, and donated to academic work.

The Epstein files are a maze of conspiracies, collusion, and potential networks of exploitation and cover-ups that took place decades ago; It’s hard not to get lost in the documents, fall down the rabbit hole and start following topics. But sometimes there will be a reminder that the worst of what happened isn’t in the files at all — the email chain will end abruptly, and you, the reader, will be forced to fill in the blanks of what both parties are talking about, or tiptoe around.

In a December 16, 2010, email, Seckel and Epstein were briefly arguing over pricing for a Google cleanup job — Seckel telling Epstein that he was “trying to fix the mess (Epstein made),” just trying to be helpful. But at the end of the email, it takes a turn.

“I must talk to you about the island question as soon as possible,” Sickle writes. “When can we do that?”