For all the SEOs and online businesses, this Google update is worth noticing. Google responded to a New York Times story that was about a business that had a faulty advertising plan by developing a new algorithm. This algorithm will work in such a manner not to reward the businesses that offer bad customer service and negative advertising in order to come up on Google PageRank.

According a Google’s blog post, it was very shocking for the company to learn about the terrible experience of a customer regarding the said issue and it organized a team to investigate the matter. As a consequence Google has recently come up with this algorithm to find out about companies providing bad customer service so that it can make it count in Google’s PageRank.

The incident holds that a customer, Rodriguez, ordered a pair of Lafont eyeglasses from online store DecorMyEyes.com. The glasses she wanted to purchase turned out to be out of stock and the store refused to refund the money she had paid. Later when she received the right pair, it was found that they were counterfeit. The owner threatened her when she complained about it to the customer service.

The customer then brought the matter up with her credit card company and as a result Tony Russo, owner of DecorMyEyes, threatened her. He filed a lawsuit against her and then sent her a photograph of her apartment when she did not respond. The matter became worse when he contacted the credit card company posing as the customer and asked them to drop the dispute.

When the customer again contacted Citi cards, they refused to reopen the dispute. She then went to New York Times and GetSatisfaction which is a customer advocacy site. It was where she found out about prevailing practices of unethical cyber practices and faulty advertising that many companies practice. But the actual concern is that the many negative reviews about DecorMyEyes and other such companies were actually promoting these companies on Google’s PageRank. This was a major issue as all the negative propaganda would lead to benefit an unethical company.

The owner of DecorMyEyes whose actual name turned out to be Vitoly Borker, later disclosed that he knew about this loophole in Google’s algorithm and all the negative publicity was part of his campaign. When he realized that negative publicity by customer advocacy sites is actually boosting his site on Google, he purposefully misbehaved with customers. Credit card companies were the only entity to keep him in check.

Hopefully the new Google algorithm will solve the problem. The company did not disclose much about it fearing that bad businesses might find another loophole to counter it. On the better side of the picture, Google considers bad customers service as a negative impact on itself and keeps working hard to provide better search solutions.

On the customers end, we can only suggest to check the retailer before ordering online. Amazon and eBay provide seller ratings and there are other information resources for customers as well so make the choice wisely. You can also get real customers reviews about retailers on GetSatisfaction, ResellerRatings, Ripoff Report, The Consumerist and Yelp.

Posted: 14/12/10 16:18