Online Reputation Management: Why Websites with Negative Content End up on Page 1 of Search Results
In an ideal world, positive
comments about your company would fill up page one of your search results,
while any negative comments about you would stay buried many pages down. But as the team at ReputationAdvocate.com sees every day, sites that encourage unedited opinions
from a variety of sources are taking over search results. ReputationAdvocate.com can assist you in understanding why search engines such
as Bing, Yahoo and Google rank these sites higher, and what you can do if
you’re the victim.
Negative content comes from a
variety of sources. ReputationAdvocate.com knows that blogs, opinion sites,
forum postings and reviews on various websites allow informal and
unsubstantiated content to be freely provided and openly displayed. While this
may benefit someone with a genuine issue, customers reading reviews before
making shopping decisions have no way of evaluating the objectivity or accuracy
of such claims. Our team at ReputationAdvocate.com cautions clients that far too often, the words
you see posted online may not be from an authentic source. In fact, many of
these comments come from disgruntled employees and competitors, trying to
disrupt your business and influence current clients to re-evaluate long
standing relationships with you.
One of the biggest challenges that exist for clients of ReputationAdvocate.com with the dozens of product review sites now available is that no one is evaluating comments to ensure they are valid and accurate. Anyone can post anything anonymously, and the site will take no action against the content. Even placing formal complaints with such sites can prove fruitless, as review sites choose not to view themselves as anything more than a bulletin board providing third party content.
Unfortunately, as
ReputationAdvocate.com sees firsthand every week, review sites tend to rank high in search
results. It may seem unfair, but the team at ReputationAdvocate.com acknowledges there are
very good reasons for this. Google uses web crawling technology to deliver its
search results and variables such as outside sites linked to your content
influence the page position of postings. ReputationAdvocate.com has seen that ratings sites tend to be linked from a
variety of both affiliated and non-affiliated sites. ReputationAdvocate.com
knows that search engines define these sites as more relevant to search terms
based on the high volume of internal and external backlinks.
Additionally, search engines tend to give search preference to sites with more traffic. Search traffic patterns empirically make a statement about humanity – sites with negative, derogatory commentary tend to draw high click traffic. A consumer scanning first page search results, for instance, might feel drawn to click on the link with a passionately-delivered bad review in the description. Words like “scam,” “fraud” and “thief” attract significant attention.
Unfortunately, once that
click through has taken place, consumers generally buy into what they are
reading. ReputationAdvocate.com has noted that there is often no way to properly
research the background on a particular complaint even if a consumer feels
inclined to do so. When the negative comments are spread over several different
ratings sites, ReputationAdvocate.com points out that consumers tend to believe the
comments are coming from different people, even if there’s no way to know for
certain. ReputationAdvocate.com has seen disgruntled commenters launch a smear
campaign that gives the impression of widespread problems with a company as
opposed to an isolated single issue. Combating this sort of bad publicity is
difficult, but it is what ReputationAdvocate.com specializes in.
ReputationAdvocate.com knows
the challenges companies face in fighting against negative comments on sites
like these. With a team of experts ready to help, ReputationAdvocate.com can
find solutions to negative content delivered through search results allowing
your customers to learn the real truth about your company.
Reputation Advocate is online at www.reputationadvocate.com