What are they saying about you?
I wrote this a while ago, but having received similar calls this week, I thought I’d revive it, as the problem is ongoing.
One of the services I offer is Online Negative Reputation Management. I don’t make a big deal out of it, as it’s quite expensive, and it’s not something that most people need, but we do get the occasional call about it and take on one or two jobs a month. It’s also not something we can put out case studies for, 
for reasons that will become obvious!
A few months ago I saw a Tweet from @france_normandy – gite owners in Normandy, France, who had recently had a couple of fake negative reviews on Trip Advisor, resulting in this blog: Trip Advisor Fake Reviews
The same week I had calls from a photographic studio and a jewellers, both who were finding that when searching for their company name, the front page of Google brought up reviews that were negative and, as far as the callers were concerned, untrue. They were well aware that by having these negative reviews, they were losing customers – and in both cases, the loss of just one or two customers meant a considerable amout of money.
While writing this blog I’m reminded of another call a couple of weeks ago from a wedding organiser who organised weddings in another country. She had some great testimonials, but a disgruntled ex employee had started a campaign against her, and knowing the internet better than her, had managed to get some great front page positions slagging her off, posing as an unhappy customer.
See, one of the things I love about the internet is freedom of speech. Anyone can have their say on bad customer experiences – I use the web frequently to moan about Orange.fr and Aweber, among other things! But it can also be a bad thing, because if your livelihood is online, and bad reviews and negative comments can affect you, then you’re vulnerable and at risk.
It’s bad enough when the reviews are true – and believe me, we’ve had plenty of customers where we’ve quickly realised the reviews were true and had to implement a strategy to deal with that and enable them to come out of it looking better.
But when they’re untrue and the sites involved have published them without checking, without thinking, and in a lot of cases without verifying the person involved, it’s worse. Reviews that are negative and downright untrue, yet have no real name attached, can’t be traced back to an actual customer, and may even be a competitor or ex employee / business partner can still be accepted and read as if they’re true.
And in a lot of cases the vendor has no comeback – not all review sites let you challenge a review, and some of them will just refuse to remove the bad reviews, no matter what proof you send.
In the cases I talk about above, the jeweller, the photographer and the wedding planner, we are able to help – we can implement a strategy to drive the negative reviews off the front page, limit the damage caused by the reviews in other ways, and help to limit the impact they have.
In the case of @france_normandy, Trip Advisor is a big part of their business, and really needs to tighten up its processes to avoid a backlash. Happily it looks as if that one will be sorted out in the end, but at what cost? The longer a negative review is in a prominent position, the more damage it can do.
It’s a timely reminder to keep on top of what is being said about you online – make sure you at least have Google Alerts set up so that anything published with your company name is seen by you immediately and can be responded to – if it’s in the public eye then your potential customers could be seeing it.
In a world where ‘to Google’ is common before choosing a supplier, make sure that if someone ‘Googles’ you, they see what YOU want them to see, not what your enemies do…
About NikkiPilkingtonNikki owns NikkiPilkington.com, anInternet Marketing Agency based in the UK & France, helping small and medium sized businesses to promote themselves online through SEO, Social Media Marketing and Blogging. She has 2 gorgeous daughters, 18 years apart, too many cats, and not enough chickens.
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7 Responses to What are they saying about you?
All that jazz – All in A Day
Review of: Cousin Alice Jazz Music by Cousin Alice: Elaine Sturgess Reviewed by: Elaine Sturgess Rating: 5 On January 21, 2012 Last modified: January 30, 2012 Summary: What makes Alice so distinctive is her wonderfully smokey voice, a quality that furniture designer William Yeoward found so arresting at a concert she was performing for the [...]
Sound advice – none of us are perfect and it is just too easy to write whatever we want now. As Nikki suggests – if nothing else, do your Google Alerts and review these every few weeks (pops off to do same…)
Twitter: babssaul
Yep, it's not good. We had an absolutely diabolical review posted anonymously on two different review sites – we responded to them both publicly asking the 'customer' to contact us so we could sort the problem out (they never did) plus we challenged both sites privately to give us more information (they never did either but removed the posting in both cases and, as yet, they haven't been put back up). It did make us more vigilant though, we set up Google Alerts plus we routinely check all the review sites regularly to make sure we know what's going on. Online reviews are such a great thing and, as an online retailer who offers a service, we must take the rough with the smooth. But an anonymous review made in this way is rough in the extreme
Great post, thanks 
It can get very tough for businesses out there with the popularity of review sites. Our business is on one such site and a sub contractor who was closing his business 2 days after he completed a job for us marked us a late payer.
Usually the times we pay late is when we lack the required information to make payment in conjunction with our business requirements, which is generally 30 days after the invoice has been received (this is pretty much standard across the board). But to have one mark us a late payer on a whim was annoying. I'd like to think it was just our industry, but sadly people do seem to take a grievance beyond dealing with when they start going online and ranting about it – I do it myself on my own blogs from time to time, usually after an exhausted complaints procedure.
I think it was you that originally introduced me to Google Alerts, Nikki – or maybe it was Babs. And I now have this set up. Interestingly, what I've found is more people abroad using my business name, rather than it being anything to do with a review, but I can't say I'm too bothered. One lady renamed her blog The Nappy Lady NZ, in the same way that I use @nappyladyuk in Twitter.
As you say, though, the potential for malicious and often untrue reviews hitting the top of Google is enormous and costly. A reputation takes years to gain but only seconds to be destroyed.
What is it people say, Morag? “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!”
I've been lucky and only had 2 or 3 unfavourable reviews for my books over the years. Maybe I should see that as a sign that my books are so insipid no-one could feel strongly about them (although I've had a lot more good reviews than bad ones…!)
Twitter: SuzeStMWrites
To be honest, Suze, that's exactly what I think about imitation. And having deliberately chosen such a generic name, I also benefit from plenty of people who simply Google “nappy lady”to find a nappy retailer, even when I know they had someone else in mind!
Don'tm be silly – your books are not insipid at all!
Some times reviews can faked and bias. The thing is what we need is to find a site according to our needs, like if I need any product and i am looking for some review on it. I always prefer to discuss about it in respective forums, social network…