Reputation Management Online

Consumer Review websites are increasingly becoming the source of pernicious attacks on competitors as they allow effectively anonymous attacks on a competitor without any real comeback on the critic. Simply post a complaint without any facts or details and, hey presto, you have damaged their reputation at no cost to yourself. We cannot think of a better example of when a competitor tries to trash a reputation management company name.

What should we make of it?

Consumer Sites will need to sharpen up their act:

As companies pay more attention to these sites, so the role of website publisher will put consumer complaints websites in the legal frame. They will need to capture more structured and verifiable data about complaints or risk being repeatedly sued. At the moment, they publish without proof, soon the burden of proof will be on them to be more proactive in establishing the veracity of complaints.

The ReputationManagementFor Experience:

We have been the victim of a hoax complaint that we have assumed is originating from a competitor. The same complaint has been posted across a number of consumer complaint boards:

• http://www.ripoffreport.com/seo-reputation-management/reputationmanagement/reputationmanagementfor-com-r-678b4.htm
• http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/reputationmanagementforcom-rip-off-c299764.html
• http://www.scamfound.com/f13/reputationmanagementfor-com-scam-reputationmanagementfor-com-rip-off-89581.html
• http://reputation-management.pissedconsumer.com/i-have-been-duped-by-reputationmanagementfor-com-20100115167881.html

Coincidentally, other reputation management companies are being criticised in relatively similar ways at the same time:

• http://search-reputation-management.pissedconsumer.com/searchreputationmanagement-org-scam-20100114167737.html (14th January 2010)
• http://erepute.pissedconsumer.com/erepute-net-are-scammers-don-e2-t-trust-erepute-20100113167601.html (13th January 2010)
• http://tsavoagency.pissedconsumer.com/tsavoagency-com-is-a-total-ripoff-tsavo-agency-20100113167616.html (13th January 2010)
• http://repuclean.pissedconsumer.com/repuclean-just-a-nightmare-20100111167363.html (12th January 2010)
• http://ez-positioning.pissedconsumer.com/ezpositioning-it-e2-s-ezpositioning-com-complaint-20100112167458.html (12th January 2010)
• http://reputation-repair-center.pissedconsumer.com/reputationrepaircenter-com-reputation-repair-center-20091216164639.html (December 2009)

Interestingly PissedConsumer.com offers reputation management services of its own: there may or may not be a coincidence there.

Other consumer complaints sites seem to have a number of new complaints:

• http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/reputationprofessorca-scam-c300462.html
• http://www.companynamesucks.com/reputationmanagementfor.com-con-artist-sucks-1912.html
• http://www.companynamesucks.com/reputationprofessor.com-is-a-scam-sucks-1929.html
• http://www.companynamesucks.com/reputation-repair-center-is-a-huge-mistake-sucks.html
• http://www.companynamesucks.com/searchreputationmanagement.org-sucks.html
• http://www.companynamesucks.com/tsavoagency.com-is-a-total-ripoff.-tsavo-agency-sucks-1899.html
• http://www.companynamesucks.com/erepute.net-are-scammers-sucks-1898.html
• http://www.companynamesucks.com/ezpositioning-it%E2%80%99s-sucks-ezpositioning.com-scam-sucks-1890.html
• http://www.companynamesucks.com/repuclean-,-just-a-nightmare-sucks-1886.html
• http://www.companynamesucks.com/guardmyrep-sucks-1852.html
• http://www.ripoffreport.com/seo-reputation-management/reputation-repair-ce/reputation-repair-center-is-a-d6be8.htm

If you read through RipOff report (http://www.ripoffreport.com/Search/reputation.aspx?p=2 ) you get a strange feeling that everybody suffering from Reputation Management issues was taught by the same English teacher.

Reputation Management is not exactly a widespread phenomenon so it is unusual to see so many complaints all at the same and all written in very similar terms and tones. Coincidence?

You are the next victim…

We monitor our clients and also our own site and brand names so we picked up on this attempted sabotage straight away.  Damage limitation and reputation management is all about stopping such negative and non-factual content effecting your business.

Reputation Management does not only protect your company from negative customers, but as this post shows it also defends your brand from competitors who have no ethics.

How you deal with such negative comments is essential to show potential customers that some comments on the net will be completely false.

In future…

Hopefully search engines like Google will devalue these sites like they did with directories and links or will develop algorithms that can measure these complaints.  These sites can be used to trash a company reputation and quite often these companies won’t know until the damage is done.

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