An interesting trend that seems to be perking up…after exhausting other options, it appears an increasing number of customers are not simply stopping at taking their business elsewhere after being wronged by a vendor. Those wronged customers appear to be increasingly likely to put their stories up on the web, with the express intent of having their misfortunes act as a warning to others who might stumble by their site while searching for information about said vendor. Two I’ve tripped across in the past day or so:
Alan Meckler: FTD.Com For Flowers Ruined My Weekend
“Perhaps I will order flowers online in the future, but I would never use FTD.com…In the meantime I hope Google and other search engines pick up this post so that searchers can be warned about FTD.com.”
Seth Godin: Public Service Announcement
“One day, you might be considering installing Skycasters satellite internet access. It’s possible that a google search as part of your due diligence would bring you to this posting. If so, then it’s worth the space it is taking up. Don’t.”
Cool.
And, I suppose, googletrapping would be the act of placing a googletrap. Heh.
For a nice stretch, my entry on Timbuk2 bags – http://www.parmet.net/pr/2005/03/17/no-more-love-for-timbuk2/ – was the number 2 hit on google.
I even got some visits from the company, at least that’s what my server logs tell me.
But no response. Nothing.
I guess there are limits and some companies that just don’t care.
I have one of the more visible ones, I think, and I wasn’t even thinking about Google when I wrote it. I was just angry.
Google U-Haul: http://www.google.com/search?q=u-haul
There are a fair number of very vocal bloggers who appear to dislike their company.