Curious phenomena.
From what I’ve read there is reason to doubt the “consumer of information value” of postings found at RipOffReport or ROR.
It’s not hard to mine the Web discussion about ROR so I won’t repeat the reason’s to harbor doubts about the consumer value or merits of “consumer reports” on ROR.
I’m not saying that all ROR posts are BS. Clearly there are complaints on the ROR site that relate to companies that are, themselves, selling BS, delivering BS and which deserve the bad rap they get in return.
Despite evidence that Rip Off Report isn’t the new ConsumerReports.org the posts on ROR manage rank highly in search results for company names. Quite unlike ConsumerReports.org, offers – as a service (cough, cought) – to help companies improve their consumer reputation “for a fee”. Translated: We know what gets posted on ROR will rank in Google’s results for searches connected to your company name so, if you want to repair any harm that does, pay us and we’ll see what we can do.
Hmmm . . . Sounds like a credible approach to consumer advocacy.
Here’s what bugs me.
I assume that Google “lends rank” to ROR due to its algorithms that are supposedly looking for signals of “trust” and “authority”.
Now, to me, trust is synonymous with “trustworthy”. However, for some reason I keep gagging when asked to swallow the idea that ROR meets my definition of “trustworthy consumer guidance”.
And what other role is ROR supposed to be fulfilling as it’s primary goal than guiding consumers?
Do a little research yourself and tell me about ROR’s signals of trustworthiness.
And authority? Well, that’s a topic for another time.
But really, I have to ask myself: IF Google’s search engineers are supposedly hard at work on equations that will determine both trustworthy and authoritative information – and this would include trustworthy and authoritative information about companies – do you think something might be broken as evidenced by the presence of ROR “information” in such close proximity to a companies name?
Would you feel at ease knowing that your company’s reputation might be in the hands of an operation like ROR?
Is that as good as it gets, Google?
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