One day while searching Google, Sherrie Pickett uncovered malicious remarks about her and her business. She’s president of FlourGirls LLC, a bakery in Mobile, Ala.
New York City’s LAPTOPMD+ noticed that foot traffic had slid to about half. After investigating, employees discovered that Google hadn’t been billing for advertising. More digging showed ads nowhere on display.
Mustering all of its significant technical expertise, the company couldn’t even make the ads display on a computer screen, according to Alex Mouravskiy, director of online marketing. They subsequently learned that a competitor had reported their ads a “counterfeit.”
These two retailers span the high-tech/low-tech gamut. One, which employs a retired schoolteacher and a school bus driver, specializes in birthday and wedding cakes, cupcakes, cookies and pies.
“If it’ll make you fat, we’re your girls,” quips Pickett. “All sweet.” In December, 2010, after 13 years of being home-based, it opened a store front.
The other, an electronics repair shop, specializes in computers, laptops and hand-held devices. Its owner carried a suitcase and went door-to-door in 2001. Now the company has 20 employees.
What did the businesses do? At the time of LAPTOPMD+’s fiasco, Google didn’t have a person for small businesses to contact after setting up an account. A response from customer support, saying that the account was in good shape, arrived after a month.
More unproductive effort prompted LAPTOPMD+’s owner to enlist help from an agent certified in the workings of Google AdWords. This service is a separate division of Google. That’s when the competitor’s action was discovered.
Pickett stopped reading the remarks, but she still wants “to do something professional that won’t embarrass my mother.” Doing less isn’t an option. She notes that she can’t apologize to a nameless person who remains invisible.
“There are a lot of good cakes in Mobile,” she remarks, “but people come in for a cake and go away as a friend. I don’t want to lose that.” In other words, malicious reviews attack the core of her business philosophy.
Gary Bahadur, president of Miami’s KRAA Security LLC, offers a remedy. “Push stories to page 2, 3 and 4 of Google results,” he advises. “Getting to 3 or 4 is best.
Flood search engines with good stories, blogs and links to positive aspects of your business. They’ll push the old content down. Once (the bad remarks) are off page 1, for a small business, you have a home run, because most people are a quick hit and move on.”
He mentions that if a remark appears on Facebook, you might take legal action, but tracking people is extremely iffy.
He also says that you might pay Reputation.com to generate content and attempt to find the person. Customer service at Reputation.com reports that its customized packages start at $1,000 for the year, with a much smaller maintenance fee thereafter.
Bahadur comments that even though Google now has a small business servicing area at AdWords, it’s really not that helpful unless you spend about $100,000 per month.
He points out that technically savvy businesses might use Google forums, which offer a lot of information and answers to questions. “You can find a Twitter account of someone managing different services from Google and directly message that person,” he adds.
He endorses what LAPTOPMD+ did – “us(ing) someone operational who can help you track the clicks to send to Google to show you’re not spam.” That person can flood Google.
“This is only going to get worse over time,” Badahur predicts. “Attackers can hide so well. They can be really hard to track.”
Dr. Mildred L. Culp welcomes your questions at culp@workwise.net. © 2011 Passage Media.
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