When Bad Reviews and Complaints Attack
“Woah, what is this person talking about?!? Is this me they are referring to or someone with my same name? Uh-oh, they referred to my professional career – they must be talking about me but that’s not true!”
Sound familiar? While there are plenty of cases where the complaint or criticism is legitimate there are thousands of instances where the information given is completely erroneous.
Unscrupulous competitors or others with a personal vendetta are largely the source of these types of reputation attacks. Unfortunately for the victim, people who read these tirades are unlikely to make that connection and instead are more likely to believe them to be true!
39% of the top 100 results are consumer generated media such as blogs. Blogs and forum results are becoming a major issue for reputation management considering that 75% of searchers don’t go past the first page of results when searching. In general the key is to target Page one and two of search results or in some cases a few more depending on whether the searcher is likely to dig deep.
After interviewing more than 2,300 people, a study by search marketing agency iCrossing, and Harris Interactive found that 77 percent of adults who research online before making a purchase decision use search engines. Forty percent of those conducting online research go to search engines first.
The numbers and potential losing business or damaging relationships are certainly all the motivation that is needed for talking action.