On December 11th, 2010, Jeffrey Epstein was fretting about what came up if you Googled him. By this time Epstein had already pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution with a child and was a registered sex offender, and just a few days earlier he had been photographed in Central Park taking a stroll with Prince Andrew.
How Jeffrey Epstein used SEO to bury news about his crimes
Documents released by the House Oversight Committee shed light on Epstein’s day-to-day, largely via email — including his preoccupation with his Google presence.
Epstein emailed an associate to complain. “the google page is not good,” Epstein wrote, according to documents released last week by the House Oversight Committee. He also took issue with tens of thousands of dollars of payments, which appear to have been made to “clean up” results. “I have yet to have a complete breakdown of payments. and the results , are what they are.”
Someone named Al Seckel — perhaps Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister’s late partner — responded later that evening, sharing what he was seeing. The results included Epstein’s Wikipedia page, a New York magazine article, a “jeffreyepsteinscience.com” website, a hair transplant surgeon with the same name, and a story correctly naming him as a sex offender.
“This is BEFORE the next big sweep. I UNDERSTAND your point about ‘one thing kills me,’ but the daily beast article is gone, the other ones, including the powerful Huffington Post, are about to be pushed off. And, out stuff is on top.”
Epstein and others discuss how to use technical SEO tactics to bump news articles from Google’s first page of results
Within the documents released last week, we see Epstein and his circle strategize 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 pedophile with powerful friends.