Bad Reputation? Don't Fix Things -- Just Hide Critics On Google

from the reverse-SEO dept

Stories about sneaky search engine "optimization" techniques are nothing new. While there are plenty of legitimate reasons to try to make your site more search engine friendly, too often the techniques that some self-described "experts" in the field employ are quite questionable. However, the standard reason for using optimization techniques is to make your own site show up more prominently. It looks likes a second, related, use is becoming more popular: hiding sites that are negative about your company. Apparently, one pyramid scheme company has been building up a series of blogs to try to drive down websites that are much more critical of the company -- though, the claim in the first paragraph of the article (that the company itself doesn't appear on the first page of results) appears false, based on a quick Google search at the time of this posting. If this sort of activity sounds familiar, it's because we saw a very similar story just last month, where someone accused of spamming a few years ago was working to generate new stories about the company to drive the spamming stories down the results list on Google. It's interesting, though, that these companies with bad reputations seem to be spending time trying to drive the stories of their problems down the Google results list, rather than focusing on responding to what caused those negative reputations in the first place.