For those that find have online negative reviews on site such as Ripoff Report, complainsboard.com, pissedconsumer and scambook, there’s potential goodness!
Recently these websites saw a huge drop-off in Search Engine Page Results, due in part to a possible Google algorithm update. As many of our readers know, the purpose of anonymous customer complaint sites is to push negative reviews about a business into a higher search ranking. They even go so far as to allow content from any disgruntled, anonymous poster. As you can imagine, this can inflict some nasty damage to anyone’s online reputation. They even deny fulfilling court-mandated removals of articles and posts.
But as first discussed by our CEO Pierre Zarokian at Search Engine Journal in November of 2018, there is good news for businesses online. A drop in traffic for consumer complaint sites may help those affected by these anonymous websites. There’s speculation that this may be due to an Algorithm update mentioned previously. It’s also possible Google has put the site into a penalty or jail, as it’s probably tiresome for Google to receive the thousands of complaints about the service we’re sure they’ve received.
While it may be some great news, it’s important to take some time to validate that the sudden drop in traffic is sustained and not just a short-term issue.