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Sal
Thank you all for taking the time to comment on this topic and thank you to those that made suggestions to help us.
The 60 minutes piece transcript says this:
“...That includes the term "60 Minutes," for which Google's computers return 19 million search results in one-fifth of a second. But at first glance, the top results are all related to "60 Minutes" stories that have created some kind of controversy. And that’s a big problem with Google: Its ranking system tends to put negative events or statements at the top of the list.
And if you Google a person, Battelle says, the picture you'll get is, "an entirely skewed one, in my opinion. When anybody puts in a name, and that person has had a terrible event... that will become who she is in the world."
In the statement above, Google acknowledges the tendency of its search results toward the negative. My question is this: should Google be entitled to use its power as one of the most popular search engines to promote a negative perception of a company and individuals no matter what the sum total of their accomplishments or value to the world? And should Google be allowed to do this by presenting libelous and defamatory statements made by individuals that are not proven to be upstanding and responsible journalists? Just like Dan Rather stating un-validated comments as if they were fact, Google presents un-validated comments that bloggers post and they do it on page 1 AND 2 search results for my company. Do we stand by and let Google be the judge of right and wrong and give them to power to tilt the perception of companies to whatever is their whimsy?
In my opinion, Google’s promotion of un-validated blog entries is irresponsible, extremely damaging and it hurts the 10’s of million of happy users and my company overall. It also adds to the cache that Google sustains to “come here to read the dirt on a company.” It’s an outright abuse of power that any newspaper or periodical would be ashamed to exhibit. The way I see it, Google is becoming the National Enquirer or Star magazine of the Internet, rags dedicated to sensationalism and cheap, quick sales. I’m happy to report that Yahoo and MSN do not seem to have to stoop to the same snake oil salesman tricks.
All companies have dirt and all companies have proponents. All people have bad things that they have done and good things that they have done. I ask each one of you that posted to this thread saying that they think that this it is okay for Google to do, that if when somebody googled YOUR name, and the 20 worse things that you did in your life came up on pages 1 and 2 - and some things that you didn’t do but bloggers just got the “bring the evil person down” bug and jumped on board- and the comments are stated in a vile, vituperative, nasty manner, stated as if they were proven facts, called you a fraud, a scammer, and curse words. This despite the fact that you built hospitals for children, gave money to charities, won the Nobel Peace Prize and developed a valuable service that is used and appreciated by 10’s of millions of users, how fair would you think this practice of Google is? And no matter how many times you counter-post (as was suggested in the thread above) or remedy the complaints, there are those nasty statements stated in a tone that infers that they are validated facts at the top of the blog thread. Who is going to give any validity to your comments at the bottom? You’re already on the defensive and it will sound that way - no matter what you say. How would you feel about Google practice to focus on the negative then? Hm? If when you tried to do business, and any potential customer got all this dirt on you the second they know your name, who would want to do business with you? You would be on the defensive in all your dealings.
By tending toward the negative, one might argue that Google is getting away with wildly irresponsible journalism, hiding behind the protection of its algorithm for presenting search results. And Google gets to claim no responsibility for damages done to a company or individual as a result. If the New York Times did this, they would be discredited in a New York minute. In this case, the distribution mechanism of content (the Google search engine) has not editorialized the content but it has very much editorialized the presentation of content and for that, I think we should expect more responsible journalism and presentation of whole picture or at least some recognition that blogger comments are not validated facts and favoring them on page 1 and 2 of search tends to give the impression that they are facts.
If there are 10 slots on page 1 and Google fills most of them with blog slam sites vs. the positive things that are being written about a company by external respected journalists and industry analysts and other sites that highlight the value that the company brings to the vast majority of its users, then that is a disproportionate representation of reality. In my opinion, Google is being irresponsible by letting un-validated statements made in blog entires manipulate their results, that Google is instrumental in giving a false stilted representation of my company by not addressing this, and in that sense Google is responsible for damages caused by this stilted representation.
I think a really interesting journalistic piece for 60 minutes or some other large publication to do would be a story on how Google emphasizes sensationalistic and negative press possibly for the cache of being the place to get the dirt on people and businesses, and how damaging this really is to companies that are proven to do a lot of good for the vast majority of their customers. The piece might delve into how Google is aware of this weakness in their algorithm and how their delay in dealing with it causes real damage to productive and promising companies that employ lots of people and do the world a lot of good. It might also question how such a powerful vehicle for delivery of content can get away with publishing negative content under the excuse of a proprietary algorithm and raise of the awareness of the power of Google to damage individuals and other businesses, especially ones that might be considered competitors of Google. The piece might consider why should Google be treated differently from an irresponsible periodical that prints and distributes libelous statements as if they were fact.
In my opinion, Google is missing the opportunity to be responsible purveyors of perception that present a balanced view of what people and companies really are, and is instead risking appearing anti-business.
I still believe that a little concerted PR effort "ganged" between different indexable media; Blogs, Press Releases, Article submissions/syndication and the new "generic" BL's they'd render, would slam "bad" links so far down in the SERPs that it wouldn't even be noticed.
IMO - We are really just talking about an effective PR (Public Relations) response to "routine" negative press using multiple on-line media at our disposal.... Right?
Nothing more, nothing less!
Ken
I still don't think that Google are saying our algorythm favours negative content. They are simply stating that a by-product of it (i.e. lots of people link to dirt and blogs update often so get fresh content bonuses) is that crap tends to float to the surface.Originally Posted by lucyme
No-one is gonna be bothered to write a blog about the joys of txt messaging while it seems lots are happy to talk about how they feel wronged by you guys. Wake up and smell the coffee Lucyme!!! There are hundreds of people up in arms about SMS.ac!!! It's not the one sad individual your initial post Mike made makes out and it seems there is both a very legitimate reason for people to be peeved as well as a clear indignance in the tone of the messages you and your colleague sent in. Shame on you.[/url]
If you've worked in the Adult SEO industry, please tell me... how do you get it up?
My web designers
I agree with Ken about the PR campaign.
It's very far fetched in my opinion to think Google is doing this because your company might be a competitor, if you do a search for search engines, everyone of them comes up, and some I’ve never heard of. It sounds more like there are some blogmasters that are very good at optimization for Google.
I would stop worrying about the Google results for your company and start a PR campaign. The reason I say this is because you will get absolutely nothing done when it comes to Google. Your only frustrating yourself. I can completely understand your feelings but I hate to see you stress over something that can be taken care of with good PR.
When it comes down to it, people have the right to express their opinion (just like you are doing, and I have done etc...). Try not to under estimate people. When I see a negative article or blog, I can tell when someone is just spewing some insane rant or they are truly expressing their honest opinion.
If it has affected your companies business, and you have lost and are losing customers daily because of this, seek some legal advice. I suppose it's possible you might be able to get Google to remove the blogs, it's important that you know I'm not giving you legal advice lol.
Seriously though, your company sounds like it has nothing to worry about. Especially if it is the company I am thinking of. But again some good PR and you will probably see those negative blogs disappear.
I have written some Articles that are not exactly in favor of President Bush, what you are saying is Google shouldn’t be allowed to rank these articles because there negative? If I am better at optimization then W’s people then I win. I am curious, do any of these negative blogs or comments come up in Yahoo or MSN?
This is an EDIT:
I just did a search for your company in Yahoo and MSN, Yahoo must list every of your users because I got tired of clicking. Seems somewhat spammy of yahoo to do that.
MSN has basically the same results as Google, not quite as much but the same blogs and articles as Google. It looks to me, and I'm not accusing because I have never used your service, that there are much more then a few unhappy people. If that many people are unhappy with your company I would want to know.
Again, I would hit the PR road real quick.
I do find Mikes question interesting:
If so, isn't this another example of links not being such a great way to determine relevance?
I think if a company has this many unhappy customers...It becomes very relevant.
Jason Tor
ok, let's just examine that statement.
Lets check out one of the people complaining. [url=http://joi.ito.com/archives/2005/02/22/letter_from_kevin_b_jones_of_smsac.html] Joi Ito[url].
Now this guy is VERY active online. Works with some big names. Is a big name himself. Now instead of talking with him smc.ac sends him a CEASE AND DESIST letter from the lawyers. Why, because he states that sms.ac spammed his friends.
Perhaps if you [i]engaged in conversation in public, online[i] with individuals who have a high profile like Joi Ito, your message could reach millions of people.
Of course you might have to change your email every warm body policy. But the upside is that you'd have thousands of bloggers now singing(blogging) your praises, because you've listened to them, the customers, the real people who will use your service and actually been proactive in responding to their concerns (hint: opt-in).
This online publicity would be fantastic for your business, a business that WANTS web users to send SMS messages. Talk about targeting an market.... you can do it.
Or, you can send nasty legal letters to people who talk about their negative experience with sms.ac.
Personally, I'd be trying to work with these people, convert their experience into a positive one. Let them talk about you.
ok, let's just examine that statement.
Lets check out one of the people complaining. Joi Ito.
Now this guy is VERY active online. Works with some big names. Is a big name himself. Now instead of talking with him smc.ac sends him a CEASE AND DESIST letter from the lawyers. Why, Well the letter doesn't say why. Not helpful.
But in a previous post, he does say that sms.ac spammed his friends.
This doesn't sound un-validated to me. But perhaps it is. I don't know. If it is an un-validated claim, you should comment on his blog about it, he seems to be a very reasonable guy. Otherwise, I'll just go with my gut feeling. If there is no info coming from your side of the fence, I have nothing to give me faith in your product/service.
Perhaps if you engaged in conversation in public, online with individuals who have a high profile like Joi Ito, your message could reach millions of people.
Of course you might have to change what seems to be an email every warm body policy. But the upside is that you'd have thousands of bloggers now singing(blogging) your praises, because you've listened to them, the customers, the real people who will use your service and actually been proactive in responding to their concerns (hint: opt-in).
This online publicity would be fantastic for your business, a business that WANTS web users to send SMS messages. Talk about targeting an market.... you can do it.
Or, you can send nasty legal letters to people who talk about their negative experience with sms.ac.
Personally, I'd be trying to work with these people, convert their experience into a positive one. Let them talk about you.
Hi lucyme
I am not an unreasonable person and my initial post about sms.ac was an apology to my friends. I posted it because people kept emailing me asking me about sms.ac when they received the invite. I had not complete the signup process so I had to reply to each of these inquiries with an explanation that they were receiving the invite although I wasn't a participant in your service. (Or at least I didn't think I was.) Later I tried to delete my account on sms.ac in hopes that this would stop the invites. It was very difficult to delete my account and the link to the section referred to in the help file didn't exist and I had to go through site map to find section to remove myself.
In the original post, I wasn't making a judgment about your service since I didn't really try it. I did however, end up sending all of my friends invites which were unsolicited. I therefore used "spam" as a verb for what I ended up doing using sms.ac. I did not call sms.ac a spammer. It really was an apology to my friends more than a criticism of your site.
However, someone at your company must have been offended because I received a rather aggressive email from your counsel. I do not like to be threatened and I believe that such letters are rude. Most of us would happily open a dialog. I understand that a number of bloggers have received this letter and contact from your counsel. During this whole time, I was never contacted by anyone else from your company and I am currently waiting for a reply from your counsel after a number of email exchanges trying to understand exactly what the complain was.
I can hear the anger and frustration in your post, but I urge you to try to participate in a dialog. Most of the highly ranked bloggers aren't highly ranked because they are mean idiots. We try to be fair and honest. Contrary to the notion in the postings here, I probably write more positive postings about companies and products, even my competitors, than complaints. If you want a list of positive posts, I'd be happy to provide them. ;-)
At this point I would suggest one of the following:
1 - Make a sincere effort to try to address some of the complaints. I would cut down on the number of invites you send out. (Particularly if the accusation that you repeatedly send them out is true.) I would also have the invites go out after the user uses the service and decides to invite friends, not before. I would also clearly label how to delete your account.
If for business reasons, you are unable to do the above I would at least clearly mark for the new user the fact that invite will be sent immediately and confirm that the user understands this.
2 - If you are unwilling to make any changes to your service, maybe you can post an explanation or contact us by email. I would happily post another post with your response to any false accusations. I believe that you should have a voice in this dialog, but I urge you to leave the lawyers out of it.
I am posting this as a suggestion. If you continue to communicate with me through your lawyers, I am willing to defend myself since I do not believe I have done anything wrong.
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