Anti-Business Attitude From Google?

[Jason Tor]

Wow, that's a marked change. Has it helped your PR or your SERPs?

Dani

It's only been a couple days so I can't tell yet. But I'll let you know.

Jason Tor

[danielle v2.1b]

It's only been a couple days so I can't tell yet. But I'll let you know.

Google updates roughly equivalent to the rate of site updates normally. For example it's going crazy over news sites whilst your average updated on-and-off company site will see a monthly crawl. Maybe it'll calm down if you don't keep updating the blog. At anyrate, I just wanted to see if there was a blog bonus - I'll keep my ears open for news Jason!

[Jason Tor]

I think everyone would love to know what company this is?

Jason Tor

[Andilinks]

Maybe the company should look at running ads on blogs.

Start with the one that wrote something bad about them. Enough money, I´m sure they can think of something good to say.

Running ads on blogs is a great idea. Bribery though is not a remedy I'd suggest to honest businesses. Perhaps addressing the complaint is something you hadn't thought about.

The reason Google revisits blogs more often is that they change more often. I find that updating content on any page produces this same result.

Andi

[benhamilton]

I work for a company that has 10's of millions of happy users and a few unhappy ones. My frustration is that the few unhappy ones write something in their blog, one tiny entry, and it ranks on page 1 of Google.

We publish 3-4 press releases and articles a week and use a wire service that gets the releases published on yahoo biz and AOL finance, plus many other strong sites and these do not out rank a 2 sentence blog entry that has the name of our company and the work fraud or scam in it.

A two sentance blog post!!!

So step one, write an article/press release/post/whatever want to call it, publish it on your site.
Step two, COMMENT on the offending blog. (with link back to your article)
Step three, continue the converstaion.

This works in real-life - if a customer walks into a store all angry and upset, it's best to SOLVE the problem in front of all the other customers, turn the angry customer into a happy customer. All the customers in the shop will be reassured that the company *really* cares for them. They are then happy to deal with the company.

Yes, there are other senario's. for example, you could ignore the customer. The question to then ask is: how are the other customers going to feel about you, your product and company?

Or *if* the customer is blatently wrong (I've got no idea, cause you haven't told us the real story) then say that. AND back it up with facts, figures and good reasoned logic, not name calling and competitor basheing the the like. If the customers around (in the shop, or on the net) are listening to this converstation, they will decide for themselves WHO is right and who is wrong. (customers are actually smart)

The other advantage to posting the ONGOING convestation in the offending customers blog, is the links back to your site (assuming no rel=nofollow :-)

Ben.

[espectations]

Press releases should NOT be watered down advertising - speak to any media member or professional in the PR industry and they will tell you that.

The purpose of a press release is to disseminate information to the media in a specific format - so there are ways to write a proper press release. The target audience here is the MEDIA - not Jo blocks on the corner of the street.

Yes, we use it to drive traffic and build brands but I have see a whole lot of poorly written press releases and tell you now that the media would never read it.....and the ultimate aim of a press release is to stand out amongst the many so that you could catch the attention of an Editor to let a journalist
contact you, investigate the issue addressed in the media release and have it printed.

People are using Press releases at the moment for the wrong reasons hence defeating the object of the excercise.

Anyway, any good PR company disseminating news in my opinion, should also have a blog and more important have RSS feeds.

And I agree that the customer should stop taking the negative news personal. Get a qualified PR to turn that negative situation into a positive one.......

Address the customer's issue, solve the problem and do a case study about it (now there is another article for you). At business school we had a lot of negative case studies which we had to handle and it is not difficult to turn a negative customer into your best customer and best referral. I personally have done that in the business world by attending to the problem.

Anyway, just my two pence - if the PR companies you are using does not have their own blogs then start one and add RSS feeds to it.

[roam_dx]

There are a lot of points to this discussion

one is the right to information
the other is the right to privacy.

There is a lot of people saying the customer has a right to know, but when you're on the internet, it's not only the customer who has this information, its competirors, random gossipers, people who post and spend their time in forums all day discussing non issues...all kinds of people, looking for all kinds of kicks and "stuff".

You have a fight, or got drunk and got home late last night, smoked a joint...would you want it broadcasted over the internet, I'm sure there are people who would be interested in that information before they decide whether they want to do business with you today.

Do you think after finding, reading the negative information on this blog, which by the way, ranks higher in google, a customer is in any position to make an objective judgement on whether to do business with a company. I think not. I think you just made the mistake of doing business with a frustrated immature blabber mouth who never grew up so publishes a blog to vent his frustrations from a small dark room somewhere in the moutains, has no friends or family...some one like the una bomber...you just had the bad luck to do business with him...you could have never known. Next thing you know he got a bomb up your A$#@#

Does it mean this company has more dissatisfied customers than any other company in the world, than Google for example, i think not. Google doesn't even respond to mails. And fact is, very often I don't respond in time to customer enquiries, in fact I almost never do anymore. There are so many priorities. So do we wanna take all the trash and garbage and bickering and publish it on the internet. I think Google would just love it. Everybody sit around and publsih garbage on the internet so that they can display their stupid ads. Thoughtless Proliferation.

Does it have relevance? in a depraved sort of way, I guess. Is it information? in this mindless, information overload world we live in, I guess it is!

I have had similar issues with Google. In fact now when I even plan a business, I plan before I start how and when and how much I want Google to find out. This no holds barred internet indexing sometimes just doesn't make sense.

This is as much spam as the spam websites that rank above you, Google does it to everyone sometimes in some way or the other. But I don't have a better idea or solution to Google yet, so I don't complain.

And some of the solutions offered are brilliant, particullarly this one

benhamilton wrote:
So step one, write an article/press release/post/whatever want to call it, publish it on your site.
Step two, COMMENT on the offending blog. (with link back to your article)
Step three, continue the converstaion.

This works in real-life - if a customer walks into a store all angry and upset, it's best to SOLVE the problem in front of all the other customers, turn the angry customer into a happy customer. All the customers in the shop will be reassured that the company *really* cares for them. They are then happy to deal with the company.

[Andilinks]

Do you think after finding, reading the negative information on this blog, which by the way, ranks higher in google, a customer is in any position to make an objective judgement on whether to do business with a company. I think not.

We disagree. Life is not fair, injustices happen. But through it all I hold one thing axiomatic: More information is better than less information. If someone I'm hiring or doing business with is someone who gets drunk, gets in a fight, or whatever I want to know about it. If the information is inaccurate this will eventually come out.

The lesson here is that information travels very fast and you should live your life accordingly.

Yes, people do lie but that has been happening from time immemorial and this too should be taken into consideration when evaluating information about a potential vendor/partner/employee. Not one of us is perfect and sometimes we are defined by our enemies, but in the end the remedy for bad information is more information, not less.

Andi

[Jason Tor]

You have a fight, or got drunk and got home late last night, smoked a joint...would you want it broadcasted over the internet, I'm sure there are people who would be interested in that information before they decide whether they want to do business with you today.

Do you think after finding, reading the negative information on this blog, which by the way, ranks higher in google, a customer is in any position to make an objective judgment on whether to do business with a company. I think not. I think you just made the mistake of doing business with a frustrated immature blabber mouth who never grew up so publishes a blog to vent his frustrations from a small dark room somewhere in the mountains, has no friends or family...some one like the una bomber...you just had the bad luck to do business with him...you could have never known. Next thing you know he got a bomb up your A$#@#

It sounds to me like maybe you had this happen to you? What's the difference between someone slamming a company and you slamming them?

Your assuming that everyone that puts up a blog is, how did you put it....a frustrated immature blabber mouth who never grew up so publishes a blog to vent his frustrations from a small dark room somewhere in the mountains, has no friends or family

That's ridiculous, anyone has the right to tell someone their experiences with any company. If someone blogs out a company with positive comments are you going to feel the same way? I THINK NOT?

For most, to go through the trouble (how much or little it may be) to actually put up a blog about an experience they had with a company, this tells me they feel strongly enough about their negative or positive experience with that company to tell people.


The internet gives everyone the ability to express their opinions as they see fit and get their opinions out to a large audience. I would be willing to bet that this large company really doesn't care! But the customer that had a bad experience does!

Why on earth would someone think just because another has an opinion their a "a frustrated immature blabber mouth". You seem to have expressed yours pretty well and I'm personally glad you are able to do so.

If someone has a bad experience their going to tell people, if the company in question has a problem with that then they have the ability to make it right by the customer or not.

very often I don't respond in time to customer enquiries, in fact I almost never do anymore. There are so many priorities.

This may be the very reason this person blogged out this company to begin with. You say "There are so many priorities." Your customer should be your number one priority! So often companies want you to buy something but they don't want to offer any customer service in return.

A lack of customer service and more importantly a lack of customer attention is the number one reason for irate customers. Can you blame them? Can you honestly say you have never been agitated with a company for the lack of attention they showed you after you spent your hard earned money on there product or service?

So step one, write an article/press release/post/whatever want to call it, publish it on your site.
Step two, COMMENT on the offending blog. (with link back to your article)
Step three, continue the conversation.

This works in real-life - if a customer walks into a store all angry and upset, it's best to SOLVE the problem in front of all the other customers, turn the angry customer into a happy customer. All the customers in the shop will be reassured that the company *really* cares for them. They are then happy to deal with the company.

This is a good concept if your actually in the store however, in a blog or a press release all your going to do is let even more people know about your unsatisfied customer and possibly do even more damage. The best thing to do is learn from that customer and try not to make that same mistake again.

Jason Tor

[benhamilton]

Do you think after finding, reading the negative information on this blog, which by the way, ranks higher in google, a customer is in any position to make an objective judgement on whether to do business with a company. I think not.

I think Andilinks says in 14 words what it took me a whole post to say, without putting it so succintly.

but in the end the remedy for bad information is more information, not less.

Get the client to setup their own blog... if, and only if, they are prepared to ACTUALLY talk with the customers.

If they just want to broadcast information at their customers, then they can continue with whatever they are currently doing, or go to a regular media PR firm and get advice to do some radio/tv/print/billboard adverts. Very one way tho.