It’s no longer the tabloids that can lift you up only to knock you down, the hand that feeds you can quickly turn and bite you on the ass too. But there is growing evidence of a new phenomenon about to take you down and out. It takes just one internet savvy person to put the wheels in motion and knock you off your perch and it could be that its not a consumer that’s having a bit of a rant about you, it could be your competitor.

A lot of online companies have used customer testimonials to support their customer services, product appreciation and all round good experience (it should be noted that an online company can be selective in the way they chose to display consumer feedback, after all, you really would not want to display the comments that are anything less then complimentary). We have seen a huge rise in consumer feedback sites and many consumer comments will be displayed under natural search for your company or your company’s products and or service. The idea is so that consumers can do their home work about specific websites, the ones to use and the ones to stay away from. These sites when they first emerged, had all the good intentions in the world in order to facilitate consumers to provide honest feed back pertaining to their own consumer experience. What started off with good intentions it would seem that a few of these sites have not factored in the consumer that is not a consumer but a competitor being paid to derail your business.

Out of eight consumer sites that we contacted, seven confessed to not following through on consumer negative comments to see if those comments were legitimate. Out of the eight consumer feedback sites we contacted, I was able to set up bogus email addresses and was free to post any old garbage had I wanted to. This is a heads up for consumer feedback sites, if you accept comments without doing your due diligence, you may end up in court for facilitating untruths or even facilitating the bogus manipulating of a negative comment.

I touched on the subject of Citizen Journalism and how we are all free to write anything we like without censorship. Imagine what damage your competitor could do to your business.

Sometimes, for online businesses, in the quest “to be seen” at a substantial financial cost, may for some, turn into a quest for “not to be seen” in some places, and may also eventually be at a substantial financial cost. There is money to be made in managing an online business’s reputation and there are several companies that have positioned themselves nicely to assist in such matters.

If we want to get even more paranoid, the urban myth that viruses are manufactured to keep anti virus software companies in business, then are the companies that look after managing an online business’s reputation, an urban myth waiting to happen.
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