Trolling As An Ecommerce Strategy? Online Store Increases Google Rank Via Obnoxious (Perhaps Criminal) Service
from the that-can't-last dept
A few folks sent over this rather bizarre, but entertaining, story in the NY Times about a guy who operates an online ecommerce shop for eyewear out of his home office, and seems to have done quite well... in part by being a total jackass. The story is almost unbelievable. I'm not going to name the site, because, as is noted in the article, the guy thrives on having his site named in various places, which has only served to boost the Google juice for it. However, the guy discovered that the more complaints he got online, the higher his site ranked in Google, leading to more sales. Yes, if you do a search on the site's actual name, there are tons of complaints warning people to stay away -- but many of his customers don't actually do that. They just search on a brandname of glasses, and his site pops out at the top. The guy seems proud of his strategy of being totally obnoxious to "psycho" customers. It's clear that this is a cultivated strategy -- as the guy runs another store on Amazon where he's careful to take care of customers, since Amazon apparently will kick you off pretty quickly over complaints.It's pretty clear that the big problem here is in how Google ranks such sites. As the article points out, again, Google has plenty of information about such ecommerce providers in its system -- such as on its shopping site, where there are tons of negative reviews -- but Google doesn't currently surface such information.
It seems like this is a temporary situation, though, as search filters should only get better over time, and will provide more ways of filtering out the bad players like this guy. Though, from the sound of things in the article, other issues may take care of this guy first, as it sounds like almost every other service provider the NY Times spoke to about this guy canceled his account about the time the article was published -- and the guy also may have been arrested for some of his statements to customers that certainly appear to be threats to do them bodily harm. Of course, a quick check on his website shows that it's still up...
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Filed Under: ecommerce, search rankings
Companies: google
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That's actually a really good point... Surprised they don't.
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the first one was autodesk, which is extremely anti-customer. the second result was microsoft.
so... its a shill site for paid advertisements?
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caveat emptor
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Screw the google results, how is this guy not in jail?
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Anyone with me?
I'm not sure what the problem is... I absolutely agree that it is not sustainable, but is he any more of a dick than a traditional middleman? A person that buys from a company and acts as a middleman but doesn't provide a guarantee on services....
At some point in the future, the public needs to get smart about what they purchase online... and until then... I almost think this guy is a hero because he is working within the boundaries (screwing some customers), and teaching people what online shopping should be... it isn't a paradise... it's shopping.
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Re: Anyone with me?
No thanks.
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Citations
However if these citations say something like "the work in Bloggs [1] is rubbish because..."
then that still counts!
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Uh, dude, they do. When you're Google's size you don't just write a quick cron job
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The man's business is doomed. He shouldn't have bragged so openly about a be-evil business model. He is now above the radar. The cops, ebay, and mastercard will now be more receptive to handling complaints.
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http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/business/07borker.html
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Google's Algorithm
Google's algorithm is not perfect. Certainly the engineers at Google are already implementing new rules for not listing these online stores in the first place ranking in the serp's.
Before purchasing online visit online stores and always check the feedback of clients' online stores
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