What do the search engines say about you? February 11th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Recently I went looking for a new dentist. I pulled up my handy tool google maps, searched for a business near my house. There were about 4 different results within a few miles of my house. Google maps will show you pictures of the business (yes even if you never submitted one) website listings and reviews. The website listings often contain links to other reviewing websites. None of the dentists office has a website so I couldn’t learn much from that. However, a few had reviews.
The dentist closest to my house had one review and it was a one star ( out of 5). Curiosity got the best of me and I thought I would read what must be a horror story about a local dentist. It turns out the rating had nothing to do with the dentist in question. Whoever the reviewer was had given the dentist a one star rating because he or she has received a speeding ticket while driving by. The comment from the reviewer went on to warn drivers to stay away from this area because of the police department. The reviewer even mentioned in the post that he or she was sure the dentist was ok.
I’m sure you see the problem. Your business can get a poor rating for any reason or none at all from anyone. This could drive away potential customers. Internet surfers have ADD, if the information can not be found quickly with minimal reading they will look elsewhere. For most readers they would of seen a 1 star rating and went on to look at other dentists.
This is very common among online communities. In addition to service rating web sites, online forums tend to be a place where complaints valid or not are made. Its in your best interest to dedicate someone from your business to look for these things through a simple search query. You can even set up automatic alerts to be emailed when your business name shows up on a search engine listing.
The easiest to deal with are forum posts. You can often register and either publicly work towards a solution or give your side of the story. Most readers can tell a crazy customer that won’t be satisfied from a legitimate complaint especially when the company in question works towards a resolution.
In the end I found a dentist that had a few high ratings and reviews and went with them based solely off of what others had written. Don’t just use google, try the other search engines also to make sure your seeing all the top results.
Tags: SEO