This week, the New York Times put a nail in the coffin of organic search in their article about
distressed consumers buying from ecommerce sites
ranked highly in Google. At the center of the Times’s criticism and commentary on how search engines work is the hundreds of consumer review sites around the web, such as
GetSatisfaction
, among others. One site in question, DecorMyEyes, created a policy for themselves of harassing and deliberately making mistakes with their customers – Creating thousands of unhappy customers who were sure to go online and complain about their experience.
Many websites exist to pull together consumer reviews, including GetSatisfaction and the Better Business Bureau. These sites have tens of thousands of pages of user-generated content that helps them rank well in search engines. Unfortunately, people rarely spend the time and effort write to reviews on these sites from positive experiences, meaning that many review sites end up as collections of only the bad reviews.
The owner of DecorMyEyes, the focus of the Times’s article, realized that he could harness that energy to create thousands of inbound links for his website, boosting him up in organic search rankings. GetSatisfaction has since printed a response to the article , noting that links out from their reviews are tagged with the “nofollow” article, meaning that search engine credit does not pass out from them to the site being reviewed. Either way, enough reviews and links exist on the web to catapult DecorMyEyes.com to the top of the search engine rankings. Because of these review sites and search engine's current ranking methods DecorMyEyes was able to increase its traffic and customers by intentionally creating unhappy customers.
Marketing Takeaway
What is a good inbound marketer to do in the face of such overwhelming poor taste on the part of their competition? First, relax – The New York Times article notes that DecorMyEyes has many issues with their business as a result of their customer policies. They are very troubled financially, and are constantly threatened with losing their authority to process transactions by MasterCard and Visa. It appears that they are spending almost as much time trying to keep the basic mechanics of their business running as they are actually selling their merchandise. This also will not work for any business that depends on repeat business – None of their unhappy customers will ever come back for a second purchase.
The ultimate solution here will be part of Google’s continuing strategy of adding reviews and editorial commentary to links in their search engine results. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land wrote quite a bit about that yesterday , with examples. Google is doing their best to serve the best results their algorithm can show – We wouldn’t want them to take a direct editorial view and take a website out of the index because of negative reviews or comments – Imagine what would happen to so many sites around politics, religion, and other controversial topics.
Ultimately, as a marketer, you should continue to build links in the smart ways that you have before, and collect testimonials from your best customers and their experiences. Publish those on your website, and place them strategically as content around your website. They will both encourage the people that you shared to share the links with their friends, and provide comfort to the website visitors considering your business.
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Jeremy Samuel 6:20 PM on November 29, 2010
Wow... this is a case of the most backward marketing thinking I've seen in a long time. Your post nailed the key point about this... unhappy customers don't come back! They also tell their friends not to go in the first place.
I know a lot of people have (correctly) concluded that SEO is a fantastic long-term way to get free traffic. What these guys obviously forgot is that the absolute no. 1 best way on the planet to get great customers is to have them be recommended by existing, delighted customers. And the only think better than that is to have those delighted customers buy again and again and again from you.
Dave Meyer 6:23 PM on November 29, 2010
Very interesting! The depths that some people will sink to never fails to amaze me. However, Google is very good at adjusting their search engine algorithm so I suspect that loophole will get closed soon.
Meredi Wagner-Hoehn 6:44 PM on November 29, 2010
First, Brian, thank you for an enjoyable read!
In reciprocity, though I thoroughly value the worth of review sites, they are websites in & of themselves, making organic optimization necessary for them, too. Not to mention, organic optimization is the only way to guarantee some level of objectivity, since review sites are businesses & (as you pointed out for DecorMyEyes) their own accompanying issues.
Best,
Meredi
greenhat 6:45 PM on November 29, 2010
What a dumb title.
Mark Moran 6:53 PM on November 29, 2010
Review sites are just the tip of the iceberg. Many Websites of all stripes have generated traffic from an outstanding Page Rank built on negative mentions. The Internet equivalent of "say what you want about me, just make sure to spell my name right" is "say whatever you want about my site, just make sure you link to it."
Open Cobra 7:17 PM on November 29, 2010
Things like this might work in the short term but as you pointed out, a company like that won't last.
The sad thing is that the company probably doesn't care. They'll maximize their profits in the short term, go out of business and move onto the next shady venture.
Ah, the joys of internet marketing.
Dan Tyre 8:05 PM on November 29, 2010
This got great media attention because it was on the front page of the Sunday Times Business section but ticking off your customers rarely results in a sustainable business in any industry, era or channel.
Marcus Sheridan-The Sales Lion 8:08 PM on November 29, 2010
Great topic here, one that's been bugging me for a while because like many in the field of web marketing, I'm annoyed at how much love from Google these review sites get..which in my opinion hurts the customer/searcher experience for Google...Notwithstanding, those nerds at 'Big G' I'm sure are working on a solution to this worsening problem.
Jay Zenner 9:38 PM on November 29, 2010
I read the article in the New York Times and lost my holiday spirit altogether. DecorMyEyes is an extreme example of gaming the system to gain an advantage rather than providing a great product or service. The whole market system is threatened by the build up of measures and counter-measures trying to tilt and then level the playing field. It's hard to tell which side creates the most damage, those that devote lives and careers to creating and protecting loopholes and testing the line between legal and illegal and those that devote theirs to trying to regulate and control all the dynamics of the market. They are both sludge in the machine. One might yearn for the time when horse thieves were hung on the spot.
Michele Price 10:26 PM on November 29, 2010
Of course no one likes what they have accomplished. It is an insult to marketers with integrity.
Important thing is to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Makati Directory 10:31 PM on November 29, 2010
This is pretty insightful. I think review sites will make the organic what it was meant to be, an academic endeavor, while sponsored efforts and social media platforms feed the dynamic needs of the search engines, as well as the consumers.
Miracle Marketing 2:45 AM on November 30, 2010
Valuable content is King - it is of no use to be the best SEO expert or having top PPC marketing dollar to spend, if you can not deliver valuable content.
For sure you will slowly die...
Shriharsha Bhat 7:19 AM on November 30, 2010
I think the title of the article has whatsoever no relation to what is being written. Anyway, this is a very good case of tweaking the search engine rules for own benefit :). Classic!
Kyle James 8:50 PM on November 30, 2010
@Brian - They interviewed one of these unhappy customers on the Today show this morning. They also said that the owner of the website is in jail now. So there you go. Looks like he shot himself in the foot by speaking up.
Dave Hale 4:30 PM on December 08, 2010
The good part is that submitting reviews is a great method for high quality links. Forget about the bad part, but let's focus on the positive.
What goes around comes around.