Convinced that a competitor is operating a Google Auto-Complete 'smear' Campaign

[barley09]

Dear all,

I write this feeling somewhat helpless, but determined.

A competitor of ours, some time back, engaged an internet marketing company to manage their site, promotion, site updates, etc. I contacted this company myself to see what they offered- they include 'reputation management' in their list of services.

Since this site took over the companies' marketing, their reviews on one of the larger review sites ballooned.
We know roughly how much trade they do- using the percentage of people who take the time to leave a positive rating, it was possible to deduce that it was very unlikely these reviews were real. They are all similar, and all are 100% positive.

More alarming is the concerted effort we have seen to lambast our company on forums and in Google.
There is a forum thread running which had has contributions by people posing as customers. We have contacted some of them, and they have not replied. We analyzed their course of events, and could not match them to a real order.

Most worrying of all is the Google auto-complete which is showing the "keyword + 'complaints' " as the top result.
No, we haven't started annoying our customers or giving a bad service.

I am worried that thousands of searches have been conducted on Google for this phrase, and that we are now powerless to do anything about it.

Is there anything we can do to prove this?

Moreover, is there anything we can do to counter this?

Seems that without spending thousands, we can't. A massive, massive abuse of the internet, and I hope it catches up with the instigator.

 

[Deleted member 162294]

I believe the term for this would be astroturfing or shill marketing.

 

[barley09]

Are there any firms that won't charge the earth to investigate and take steps to possibly reverse this?

Is there any positive PR I could engage that would help?

 

[Alan]

Happy to take a look, see if I can see anything obvious. PM me the keywords, your URL & the competitors URL. I'll take a look at no charge, but no promises either, of course.

 

[JonathanSEO]

Are there any firms that won't charge the earth to investigate and take steps to possibly reverse this?

Is there any positive PR I could engage that would help?

Yeah PM the URL I wanna see the site she the negative reputation stuff they done.

 

[JamesBarnsley]

Yes I am interested in seeing this as well.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

One consideration here is that you should be carefull of who you pass information out to as they could actually be involved in the process being carried out against you online

Not suggesting anyone above is, but you need to be carefull.

If they have posted fake reviews then they have broken the law under the advertising standards agensy laws of advertising. You can get google predict removed by contacting google, as Google lost this case against them so there is precedent here.

 

[JonathanSEO]

Lets pretend it was me carrying out the reputation attack.

What would I gain from getting sent the URL and the keywords that's been suggested for brand searches? Other than knowing the owner was aware of it which I might not have known before.

Never PM'ed the URL anyway did the OP, guess it got resolved or doesn't want to.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

You would gain a lot of information if you broke into the confidence and go access to their analytics and WMT accounts. As you are well aware.

However I did state quite clearly that I wasn't aiming it at anyone, so not sure why you feel (or appear to feel) it was aimed at anyone

 

[JonathanSEO]

You would gain a lot of information if you broke into the confidence and go access to their analytics and WMT accounts. As you are well aware.

However I did state quite clearly that I wasn't aiming it at anyone, so not sure why you feel (or appear to feel) it was aimed at anyone

I didn't think it was aimed at anyone or me in particular; was just interested to see what you thought could be gained by knowing the URL + keywords as I wasn't sure.

Obviously if someone got access to analytics and WMT then there's a lot of information there, although that's a long way down the road.

 

[MASSEY]

Hmmmm, would google really listen to the op and remove the auto complete? I would think a large company like that with so few employees would only act on court orders and treat all other enquiries as rubbish, unless they were ppc enquiries.

Was it the german prostitute that managed to get the auto removed , I found that funny.

 

[maxh]

If that is true (fake reviews and defamation) they are acting illegally.

Maybe you should report them and the marketing company.

Fake reviews = illegal

Defamation = illegal

 

[skytecuk]

Any ideas where you'd raise an issue like this?

I've encountered similar things.

 

[GingerNut]

I think if you need to report this you can go to the ASA (Advertising Standards Agency).

They have a list of people who do not comply, which is quite small at the moment, as in most cases things are resolved.

If anyone does this then let me know how you get on!

 

[barley09]

Hi I think the ASA would require us to raise this as a complaint with the company in question first. I'm not sure any of this would work without firm proof.

I hear there are now 'negative SEO' companies out there which specialise in this stuff. Amazing that Google permits this.

There must be a way to report the offending website/company if you suspect this is going on?

I wonder if there is any tool which will allow me to see if negative SEO is being performed on our site?