Perhaps one of the most egregious link spammers and link farmers out there, PissedConsumer.com has been booted (erased, removed, deleted) from the Google index. Their link spamming tactics were well defined in a call-out post on SEOmoz‘ YOUmoz blog.
The news could not have come at a better time, considering many companies have been incorrectly labeled ripoff artists, scammers, and spammers. This is ironic, coming from PissedConsumer.com that was behind a HUGE link farm network of their own! I am not just happy about this as a former in-house SEO at a firm that was battling against trumped up and inaccurate reviews, but also as a concerned netizen that believes there are too many innocent people out there that can’t tell the difference between legitimate complaints and those being used for extortion purposes.
For companies that were featured on the site, it should serve as a notice to investigate the allegations and make the necessary changes within their organizations to minimize negative consumer experiences. Then, they should seek help with professional reputation management firms to engage and diffuse other negative reviews online.
It should be noted that legitimate consumer complaints sites have a place on the internet. In fact, I support honest, transparent consumer feedback and company responses. However, when a website pops up that uses these complaints as tools to solicit money from the companies in question in the form of “Reputation Management”, it crosses the line into extortion. There are many other offenders out there, most notably RipoffReports.com (and Ed’s networks of sites that cross-link profusely). Hopefully one day all of these sites will be brought to task and consumers and companies can engage in the open dialog that the internet enables without being pressured by a third party.
Thanks to @CarMaxChris for the heads up!
I’ve always thought that the leading consumer complaint site (not going to name here for obvious reasons) was a good service to the world. I especially found the company rebuttals useful because I often don’t trust the reviews of pissed off customers who might have woken up on the wrong side of bed. Most have a legitimate gripe but the most vocal and damning complaints usually come from exaggerators.
Agreed. Legitimate complaint sites serve a valuable purpose which is to inform other consumers and the companies that are listed that there might be a problem with the products, service, or information provided. However, once a complaint site crosses the line into extortion by offering to remove or water down complaints for a fee, it loses credibility and objectivity.
In an ideal world each complaint site would host the complaint, an explanation/rebuttal from the offending company, and retroactively list any steps taken to resolve the issue(s) to point out that the company either A) made things right, or B) refused to take action.
Seems far-fetched, right? Who would expect that the loop could be closed that thoroughly on each complaint? I’m sure it’s not for lack of trying. Some sites are trying to do the right thing. The best example of a legitimate complaint site I’ve found is http://www.getsatisfaction.com. They encourage and facilitate the communication between companies and customers from an unbiased, neutral position. Maybe this will be the way forward, although issues of scale will have to be resolved at some point.