Google ends 'do be evil, if you want a top ranking' policy Google has responded to a New York Times story which revealed the search engine was rewarding websites that have dozens of complaints and negative reviews with high rankings. This is because of the way the search engine rates sites according to how many other sites link to them. First the back story: the paper followed the …
Did I correctly read that this woman picked a company purely because they were at the top of Google, without doing any further research?
Maybe I'm too paranoid, but I always go by previous experience, word of mouth, or if I'm really pushed, I read as many reviews as I can from different sites before commiting.
Google is just a starting point, it isn't particularly trustworthy beyond that...
"Did I correctly read that this woman picked a company purely because they were at the top of Google, without doing any further research?"
Yep, customers are idiots. This is pretty much the philosophy used for scammers selling wrist bands that give you super powers and such.
The idiot customers go no further than the primary site that promises the earth, without actually learning everyone else hates their guts for good reason.
A fool and their money are soon parted... As the saying goes.
this is the philosophy used by most/all legitimate businesses too. Banks in the UK for example treat their customers like shit happily taking money from peoples accounts as if it is their own and yet people still have bank accounts and worse still, refuse to switch bank accounts to a less shitty provider. And don't get me started on the big retailers who provide shitty service selling what they have not what you want and STILL people buy from them. I'm looking at you particularly Dixons/DSG/Whatever the hell you are calling yourself at the moment, but pretty much any of the high street names and most of the back street ones behave this way.
Can I get my neighbour removed from the phone directory please? His dog keeps shitting on my lawn.
Google has to be extremely careful, if they start doing that they will be held responsible for everything they list, including all kinds of fraud and bamboozlement. The Recording Ass. of America probably won't have the balls to go for them, but I bet some others will give it a go.
"Rodriguez ordered glasses from the site, which turned out to be fake. When she complained, the site's owner, one Vitaly Borker, was first abusive and then threatening. When the dispute escalated Russo sent Rodriguez pictures of her apartment building and emails saying: "I AM WATCHING YOU"."
So we are told about Rodriguez, we are introduced to Vitaly Borker... and then all of a sudden this "Russo" person is introduced as though we should know who he/she is.
Who is s/he?
- you mentioned his website, which is similar to DdeeccoorrMmyyEeyyeess.com
and you mentioned the two keywords he wanted you to mention in conjunction with his website (spacing and dyslexia deliberate) -
D e s i n g e r E y e g a l s s e s
and
D e s i n g e r E y e w a e r
Not all search engines are Google, so you're still supporting him as described in the article even if Google isn't ranking him as highly any more, which remains to be seen. I'll bet he or his ilk find a new way to game the system very very soon.
Why give the moron the oxygen of publicity?
"...Google said it had 'developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience.'"
I suspect this is a guy in a room checking review sites, not some intergalactic mathematical algorithm as Google would have us believe....
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