Google Reviews mis-management

Sometimes I wonder who is looking after the web presence of some companies/organisations because sometimes it appears that there’s either no management at all.

One web-related area that needs management is Google Reviews and the following example shows why.   If you search Google for ‘private schools Canterbury’ this is highly prominent in the results:

Within that listing you can see a link to ‘4 Google reviews’ and if you click on that you get taken to the King’s School place page, which includes the reviews as shown below:

Those reviews can be best broken down as follows ..

1. One 5 star review with no text to back it up.  That has little value at all.
2. One review (Koo) that appears to be from a staff member, who hasn’t grasped that Google Reviews are for other people to post, not the school!
3. Two very negative reviews.

The nature of Google Reviews means that anyone with a Google account can provide a review.  It’s an open system and so people can review in any way that they like.  The issue here is that there appears to be no system in place that reviews what’s being said about King’s School.  This means that either:

1. A staff member has ‘web’ as a job and isn’t on the ball.
2. Whoever looks after ‘web’ for King’s School either doesn’t have a brief to keep an eye out for such things, or if they have, aren’t doing it.

What’s surprising here is that there’s no excuse.  King’s, being a private school, will not be short of money.   They presumably want to be gaining new pupils and so you’d think would be aware of what is effectively negative publicity that’s highly visible in Google.  The costs of getting someone to keep an eye on such things (plus keeping track of other online visibility) are negligible compared to the business they must be losing from such poor reviews.

What should they be doing?  These are the basics for any company/organisation that could potentially have Google Reviews written about them …

1. Have a diary note to regularly check the Google Reviews.
2. Build up a portfolio of customers who would be willing to post positive reviews when needed.
3. Having ensured that there are many positive reviews initially, if a negative review happens then use step 2 above to create an influx of positive reviews so that the negative starts to get lost.

King’s School is just the example here.  Many companies/organisations will have numerous people who could provide positive reviews about them, but who don’t take the initiative.   It’s stunning that King’s School has only 4 Google Reviews out of the thousands of pupils (and parents of pupils) who have been in and out of their doors over the years.

Let’s fast forward in time to roughly 2013.   A search for something like ‘private schools Canterbury’ will bring up more Google Places listings and those listed will have numerous Google Reviews, the majority of which should be positive.

Now is the time for geographically focused organisations/companies to be waking up to Google Reviews and capitalising on what is still a relatively untapped way to be visible in a positive way.

Why we need a Google -1 button

Forget all the hype about the Google +1 button, it’s time to think further outside the box.

For those who don’t know, the Google +1 button is what people can click if they like/recommend something that they’ve seen online.  For example, you go to a great restaurant and you ‘+1’ it online.   Then people you know will see your approval when that restaurant pops up within their visibility.   Because you’ve done a +1 they may make a restaurant booking based on your recommendation.

In short, think about the Facebook ‘Like’, appreciate that Google wants something that will compete against that, and you have the +1 button.   There are many articles about the subject and for more reading it’s worth going through the article at http://www.webseoanalytics.com/blog/google-plus1-vs-facebook-like-the-similarities-and-the-differences/.

The purpose of this blog though is to take the concept further …

A Google -1 button.

We all go to websites that we think are poor, or receive levels of service that we think are poor.  Surely then, we should have the option to ‘-1’ websites linked to things that we’ve not been impressed by?

So, let’s say you read a blog that’s clearly been automatically generated out of other blogs content.  It bugs you, so you -1 it.  You go to a restaurant that was poor and so afterwards you -1 it (or even, while you’re there, from your mobile).

You could have options to choose from:

1. -1 it without anything further to add.
2. -1 it, giving negative feedback to a central Google system.

In the same way that Google will be giving SEO benefits to websites that have good levels of +1’s, it could do the opposite to those with -1’s.

The challenge is in there being potential to destroy the reputation of someone/a business through ‘fixed’ use of -1’s.  Such a challenge can easily be overcome though as follows:

1. Someone allocates a -1 to a website. Google attributes a small negative against that site.
2. Someone allocates a -1 to a website but backs it up with commentary that’s stored by Google.  Google attributes a larger negative against that site (because it’s been backed up by commentary).
3. Google keeps a close eye on IP addresses and Google accounts that are active in -1 usage (to ensure there’s not a lot of deliberate negativity being spread around).
4. End result: Google takes the -1’s and the +1’s and uses them as part of the search engine ranking decision process.

It’s in Google’s interests to do this because people need to have a Google account (logged in) to use +1, and the numbers of Google account users compared to the numbers of people who use Facebook, are tiny.  Therefore, Google really needs to create a ‘negative’ angle to the concept (the -1 button) in order to encourage more people to sign up with Google accounts and so use the system more.

Imagine a day when you could search for something in Google, or go to a website, and you’d see certain contacts of yours have done a +1 against something and others have done a -1.  How fantastic would it be to then get the views of both sides before you make your decision?!

As with all such ideas, this is just that – the potential for Google to think deeper into the +1 concept and make it something that has an effect of encouraging businesses to up their game through the fear of them losing search engine positioning from people who may have the wish to put a -1 against their business.

Website under construction – be top of Google for stupidity

For most companies it’s great to be top of Google when people type a certain keyword phrase.  Perhaps though, the phrase ‘website under construction’ is not the best phrase to be highly visible under on the first page of Google.

The screenshot below shows the current view of websites (in the UK) that appear top of Google for the phrase ‘website under construction’ …

Top of the pile is http://www.eurofoods.co.uk/, who, as you can see below, have got links to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  They’ve even got a 2011 catalogue to view.  But they don’t have a proper website, which you’d think should be the hub of their online marketing, supported by the other elements such as Twitter etc.

In second position is http://www.sensei-winbeforehand.co.uk/2011/02/17/website-under-construction/ who have really gone for their SEO by deliberately having a website url including website-under-construction.  The note on that website says ‘Just a quick note to let you know our website is under construction, so may look a little strange for a few days’.   Nearly 5 months later and the amusing bit is that it’s just an old page that they’ve not taken down and if you go to their real home page everything is normal.  It’s amusing because the business includes proof reading as one of the services, which kind of conflicts with inaccuracies within their own website.

In third place comes http://www.hawleyrussell.com/, who make orthodontic and dental laboratory products.  They have a ‘Website under construction’ message, the ability to download a catalogue and for some strange reason they think people will want to part with the name and email address via their one page site …

You can carry on going through the Google search results looking at numerous similar examples and the more you see, the more it raises one obvious point …

If you are going to change your website then plan it out properly, get the new content created outside of the live version of the website, and then make it live.

Never ever should ‘Website under construction’ come into the vocabulary of anyone who owns a domain name.   Those three words shout out loud and clear:

• We are not organised enough to have sorted out our website.
• We have poor attention to detail.

As for the amounts of business lost all the time a website is in a state of ‘website under construction’ … that’s just criminal!

AVG Complaints – a lesson in complacency

We all know that when companies get too big they can become complacent, but do the companies themselves know how much of a negative impact they create for their future business?

When it comes to choosing anti-virus software there are some well known brands, of which AVG is one.  Being well known, you’d expect it to be quite stable and if problems occur, there’s backup support.  And there is – sort of.

Recently I had to renew the AVG licences on two machines.  I had the fully paid versions and they became updated, which is where the problems started.  From relative normality beforehand came problems with AVG thinking certain files (emailed to me or accessed over the network) had viruses in them.  They didn’t.  Then it became clear that if a suspected dodgy file was emailed to me, AVG would completely strip it out (it’s a bit embarrassing asking your staff why a certain file hasn’t been emailed when it had been but AVG chose to strip it out).

Within the AVG system there’s the ability to submit a suspect file (that’s been put in the virus vault) to AVG along with a note about the problem.  So I did this and waited for a response.  And waited and waited.   A couple of weeks later I did the same.  And nothing came back – as if my requests for support disappeared into a black hole.

So guess what?   Five ‘Custwin’ machines will soon have another anti-virus solution, that apparently won’t cause such problems.  That solution is immensely cheaper as well.   So AVG have missed out on a potential five sales of their software, not to mention ongoing renewals each year.  Add to that anyone we speak to, when the subject of anti-virus packages comes up, where we’ll be anti-ambassadors for AVG.  You start to see how the spread of negative publicity starts to happen.  OK, we are tiny minnows to AVG and perhaps us and our sphere of influence has little impact on their bottom line.  But what about other people who have the same problems?  Do they become anti-ambassadors too?  And what will happen when AVG realise they don’t get renewals next year?  Will they attempt to find out what the dissatisfaction was?  Probably not – it’s easier to just pump extra money into marketing to new people.

Is it because the AVG system is rubbish?  Not at all – it’s probably just being over-zealous.  Is it because the AVG response system fell over twice and they don’t get a third chance?  Absolutely!

How to cheapen a great domain name

www.money.co.uk – what a fantastic domain name to have.  A website full of money-related stuff, including insurance products.   Such a domain is in a great position to impress their readers and subscribers and I almost signed up to join their 530,000 other subscribers.    Until I saw the page http://www.money.co.uk/article/1004273-how-to-buy-critical-illness-cover.htm.

There’s nothing wrong with that page as such.  In fact it gives some great advice on what to look out for when buying critical illness cover.  But the page is there mainly to link people through to the page of critical illness products on offer, which is at http://www.money.co.uk/critical-illness-cover.htm.  On the surface the page looks good, as this partial screenshot hopefully shows …

A neat graphic showing key information about the critical illness products on offer, along with a nice bold ‘Best Price’ button to click on.  So I clicked on the Best Price button on the HSBC line, which brought up the following:

Bearing in mind I’m interested in the HSBC offering and the box is titled ‘HSBC Critical Illness Cover’, it’s perhaps a bit odd to see Google Ads for Bupa, ASDA, and RBS, out of which only one refers to critical illness cover.   Below those adverts is the text:

We do not have a direct link for HSBC Critical Illness Cover. Click here to visit the HSBC home page.

Why would I want to go to the HSBC home page?  I want to see what they’ve got to offer on critical illness, having compared them to others in a table.   What’s laughable is that I try out the HSBC website and they don’t have a critical illness product – they have a ‘serious illness’ one instead.  That’s  a bit pedantic but it shows how weak the large organisations are in assessing where their lost opportunities are.

The big point though is about the box of Google ads that appear because it’s not just for that HSBC line, it happens on all of them.  It looks as if this part of the website is purely there to capitalise on people clicking on the Google adverts, even though it’s not giving them what they asked for.

There’s another point to be made here – in the adverts that appeared only ASDA referred to critical illness in their ad.  Both Bupa and RBS had generic ads that could have applied to other types of insurance.  That is unbelievably sloppy management of advertising budget by the so-called ‘big boys’.  Do these people not measure where their advert clicks are coming from?

Thinking from the perspective of all those companies who have their brands up there on that page http://www.money.co.uk/critical-illness-cover.htm, they’re effectively being ‘used’ as a teaser for people to click on a ‘Best Price’ link that offers Google ads going off to competitors.  Do the likes of HSBC, Nationwide, LV etc. not watch out for this sort of thing?     Clearly not.    There are several losers here:

1. The companies (HSBC etc.) whose names are being used to attract people to click on the adverts of competitors.
2. The Google advertisers who are getting impressions on their adverts but probably low, or irrelevant clicks because they’re not targeted enough.
3. The website visitor who feels conned and thinks only that www.money.co.uk believe this is a good strategy.

Taking point 3 above, that could be the case.  Maybe www.money.co.uk are doing nicely out of the clicks they get on those adverts that appear.  But it does make a mockery out of their strapline of ‘Never Choose the Wrong Financial Product Again’ when the website acts in such a deceptive way.

It could well be that the website has a lot more going for it but from a personal viewpoint I have no trust in the website and it also makes me even more keen to steer away from big brands (such as those allowing their names to be used in that way) because they clearly have money to burn and I’d rather see my money go to someone who can give the personal touch if I want something like critical illness insurance.

Costs of .ng domain names – Nigeria goes legit?

When you think of scams, particularly those online, various countries spring to mind, Nigeria being one of them.  It’s a shame that the actions of some can end up tarnishing the reputation of a country overall.   Ask many people what they think when you say the word ‘Nigeria’ and unfortunately, ‘scams’ will be a common answer.

This made it interesting to read the Nigerian approach to their new top level domain .ng because they’ve taken the decision to charge (according to http://thenextweb.com/industry/2010/12/30/interesti-ng-nigerian-domains-go-on-sale-so-get-registeri-ng/) around 500,000 Nigerian Naira per year, which works out at over £2,000.  So while people like Google have bought googli.ng and Microsoft have bought bi.ng, for the majority of people the cost is prohibitive.

In addition, NIRA (who control the domains) have a strict policy on domain name squatting, which means that it’d be made really hard for someone to buy a juicy/gimmicky domain and then sell it on.  For example, if someone bought Nike.ng then NIRA could take the domain away from the buyer if there was suspicion that the intention was to sell it on at a higher price.

Understandably there’s quite a lot of interest in securing .ng domains because there are so many potential uses.  For example, a website dedicated to walki.ng, a company involved in marketi.ng, or a website dedicated to cycli.ng.   And then there’s the porn industry who could have a field day (I’ll leave you to work those ones out!).

What was most interesting to me though was the complete contrast between the historical negative slant to Nigeria (scams) and this positive one (charging a high registration fee and having a strict policy on domain squatting, so that it should deter those who want to take advantage).   Of course, I suppose it could also be a licence to print money (charging high costs for domains ending in .ng) but for now, it sends out a message that at least in part, ‘brand Nigeria’ is going to gain some positive PR.

Response times from website orders and enquiries

I’ve recently had three website experiences that are worth highlighting because they are all relevant to building reputation online.  Two are negative and one was positive.

When I was researching for my next car purchase I found the official Jaguar website to be pretty good.  It made it very easy to narrow down to what I was interested in and then gave me the opportunity to send in an enquiry form so that I could be contacted back.  So I did that, but being a Saturday hadn’t really expected to get an instant response.   So I waited a few days and still nothing.  I then contacted the Jaguar dealer themselves, went in to see them, and within the next week had put down the deposit.

8 days after I sent in the enquiry form I got a call from Jaguar responding to that enquiry.  Talk about a sloppy response.  Luckily for them I was set on getting that particular car but many people would have gone elsewhere.

The second negative example is Equifax.  I wanted to get an updated credit file and because I’d moved house it couldn’t all be done online.  I went through the process of trying to get support and the enquiry form auto response told me that it would take up to 11 days.  What?!  11 days for a big company like Equifax to properly respond?  That was even worse than the 8 days for a big company like Jaguar to respond to me.

And now for the positive – not from a big company but an online retailer of aquatic products.  I ordered a part and less than 24 hours later it was in my hands.  I was impressed and so sent them a positive testimonial that they could use on their website (if they wanted to), and I’ll use them again and would recommend them. 

All three experiences were website related and the small company won over the big companies.  The difference was probably that the small company was keen to impress whereas the big companies just have wage-slave employees and tons of processes.   Of course, not all small companies are the same and indeed, many larger companies probably have their act together when it comes to responding to online communications.

If you have any experiences of positive or negative online interactions with small or large companies, then please do share them here.

.co domains – are they worth it?

For £30 a year you can have a .co domain name. 

Does that sound expensive?  If so, read on …

Over a year ago, the Custwin email newsletter encouraged people to grab available Twitter names while they were still available.   That message clearly didn’t get out to enough people and since then I’ve seen many examples of companies who can’t tweet as their company name because someone else (probably competitors in many cases) have snapped them up.

Going back much further there was a land grab on standard domain names, although the range of names available was obviously much bigger than the limitations of Twitter names.  But the principle was the same – grab good domain names while they’re available.

So along comes the .co domains you can buy, and with it a heftier price tag at £30 per year.  Let’s look at a few reasons why you may think it’s worth buying a good .co name while you still have the opportunity …

1. You want to ensure that competitors don’t trade off your name in the future.  So, if your company is called Widgets for Midgets and you already have www.widgetsformidgets.co.uk and www.widgetsformidgets.com then you may feel quite safe.  But what if the widgets market gets more competitive and someone comes along and decides to trade off your name by buying widgetsformidgets.co?   They create a nicer looking website, do their SEO and other marketing better, and suddenly they’re pulling in a load of traffic that should really be yours.  If you’ve not protected your company name in any way then there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
2. You have a crystal ball.  You don’t quite know why yet, but you feel that by having one or more .co domains, it could be beneficial in the future.  Look at all those who bought numerous domains years ago, some gaining financially from then selling them on to buyers who needed them.  All those Twitter names that people have registered and are keeping active – will they be of use some day?  Who knows, and although there’s no guarantees, it’s just possible that .co domains could be beneficial in the future.   

   After all, stranger things have happened – who would have expected HMRC to write off up to £1.5bn of unpaid tax, as in the news this week?

3. In a personal capacity, you may want to create a personal brand for yourself in the future.  Many of the big names in business (and other spheres of influence) use their names as their brands.  So, let’s say your name is Jane Smith and you’re going to create something fantastic and your name is going to be your brand (potentially).  You may not have a clue how you’re going to create this personal brand, or when it’ll happen, but if you don’t grab your janesmith.co name right now then it’ll be gone by the time that you want to use it.   And yes, quite surprisingly, at the time of writing this, www.janesmith.co IS available, as are so many other name variations.

   Just in case you think “it couldn’t happen to me”, the two screen grabs below show that (as at 26th September), Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, are up for grabs as .co names (although David Cameron has been snapped up, presumably by someone with a bit of foresight).

Twitter – the power of negative publicity for One Alfred Place

There’s a flurry of tweets this morning from one of the people I follow.  They started off as:

Has anyone else had a bad experience at @onealfredplace?

followed up by …

Yes, the staff at @onealfredplace have been spectacularly rude to me twice in a week. Will be making formal complaint shortly

and evolving to other tweets from the person who was clearly annoyed by a poor level of service from the private business/leisure environment called One Alfred Place.

I’ve never heard of One Alfred Place before but I see from their website (http://www.onealfredplace.co.uk/) that they’re on Twitter.  I wonder whether they’re picking up on such tweets that are spreading negative publicity about them?  Sadly, as with so many companies, they may not be.

So the negative publicity tweets about them, coming from someone who is pretty well respected in business, and has 3,015 followers himself, is spreading outwards.    People like me have picked up on it as a subject to blog about.  Other followers will just make a mental note that One Alfred Place is somewhere to be wary of.  Others, of course, will retweet it onto others in their network.

Bad news spreads faster than good news and while most people will give a supplier of a service a chance (as I know this particular tweeter would have done), there comes a time when the knife goes in.   What would it have taken for the staff to have provided a good service and so avoided the negative publicity via Twitter.  What will the management do now, having found out that the negative publicity is out there (and will likely be visible in Google as well)?

Above all, when will companies start to realise that the offline and online worlds do not exist separately and an offline problem within a business can spread like wildfire online and have a significant knock-on effect?

As I said, I’d never heard about One Alfred Place before but now that I have and the viewpoint was negative, then that’s something that will stay lodged in my brain for awhile.

The lesson here is that at a minimum, companies should be monitoring online talk about their name/brand and be appropriately responsive so that any negative publicity is addressed, which will include handling the issues that caused the negative publicity in the first place.

Online reputation management for beginners

For many businesses, being high up in Google seems to be of high importance but how many businesses keep a close eye on what else is appearing prominently in the search engine results when your company name is typed?

Clients, whatever form they take, will become ever more powerful online and however much a company does to raise its online visibility, if there are unhappy customers then there will always be websites that put (often rightfully so) a spanner in the works.

As an example of this, if someone was interested in iphoneworldwide.com and had typed that into Google, they’d see several website links related to that website.  However, just below that they’d see a link to the url http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.iphoneworldwide.com and then another one below saying ‘BEWARE of http://www.iphoneworldwide.com/’. 

The first site (Site Jabber) allows people to say positive and negative things about websites.  In the case of iphoneworldwide.com the feedback is heavily negative and would make someone think more than twice before using them.

Everyone knows that it’s possible to engineer such comments (it wouldn’t be hard for competitors to instigate the writing of negative things about any company, multiple times under different names – or indeed,  a company could engineer positive comments about themselves) but the point is that if the comments are believable then people will react accordingly.

The subject of online reputation management is huge and this isn’t the blog to go into detail about the best policy for companies to adopt.  No, the point of this blog is to provide a (perhaps obvious) beginners tip that applies to any company.

First of all, it’s worth answering the comment of “that wouldn’t happen to me!” …

Actually, it could happen to you – if not now, but in the future.  As people get more comfortable with making complaints online, more and more websites will spring up that enable them to do that, often anonymously.   So, let’s say you’re a company that’s messed a supplier around and hasn’t paid them, resulting in a breakdown in the relationship.   Within no time at all your company name could appear high up in Google as being a bad payer.  That’s just one example and the simple message is: “this could easily happen to you as the web evolves, so be prepared”.

There are plenty of software solutions that help with online reputation management but for many companies (particularly smaller businesses) the following simple process may be sufficient.  It’s a manual process and there are better ways to do things but this keeps it simple, albeit a bit more time-consuming and not instantly responsive to online changes …

1. Put a note in the diary to check at a regular interval (e.g. each month, fortnight, weekly).
2. Search Google (and optionally other search engines) for your company name.  Look through at least the first 20-30 search results.
3. Click through to any websites that you’re unfamiliar with.  They may contain content about your company that’s fine.  They may also contain something negative.  Quite often they make you think “actually, we could make better use of that site that we appear on”.
4. If using Google, don’t just use the main search results – go for the Blogs, Updates, and Discussions options from the ‘More’ button because you’ll get a different set of results.

Although basic and not making the best use of technologies available, it costs nothing more than a bit of effort diarised in at the time intervals you choose.   Then, IF anything negative appears about your company, you’ll be well prepared to act on that.  And then we’re into a totally different subject of how to react to negative publicity online.