[Alur3n]

Are Google Bombs legal?

Like if I were to do this:

Worst host ever in loads of places, would that be legal, or not?

[robert]

Not sure I follow? Are you saying that they are a bad host and that you want to promote it everywhere and anywhere and are they legal?

[Alur3n]

Is the act of linking the text 'worst host ever' to them, in an effort to rank them first for the term in Google legal?

[robert]

I assume you had a bad experience with them and want to make sure eveyrone knows about it?

[mann3r]

It is legal until you got caught, lol, as you know you are lurking the reputation of the company so its is not legal, the intention is very clear to down the company. Like robert, I dont know also if I follow you.

[robert]

Let me tell you a little story, please read, it may help you :)

About 6 years ago, I managed operations for a pretty big internet company. In fact, it was #2 in the space overall and number #1 in terms of clients in it's own target area. When I came in, I took on the policy I always had before, the client is always right, no exceptions, no excuses. So, when ever a client was unhappy, we did everything humanly possible within reason to make them happy, we gave credits, refunds, gift certificates, you name it, client satisfaction was our #1 priority. However, I was a bit younger back then :) No matter how hard I tried or my team tried, we just couldn't make some people happy. Now, I am not saying this is the case here but please continue reading.

Because of the number of clients this company had which was huge, at least once a week, we'd get 1 unhappy person who was so unhappy, feeling as if this big internet company took advantage of them and they just had to tell the world. No matter what we would do, it was just part of doing business with that many clients. While most clients where very happy and we had an incredible customer satisfaction rate, you just could not get that one unhappy client every so often.

Ok, point of the story. To my surprise, I found what others who were more seasoned told me and something I even use to this day. That's, any Page Ranking is good PR. I was shocked, it was actually those very unhappy clients who brought in more clients than anything. When ever they would come along, they would insist on spending hours, days, weeks or even months telling the world about us. I found that because people are naturally curious by nature, they just had to find out for themselves and while I would cringe every time we had an unhappy client because we spent so much for that not to be the case, it was what it was.

My point being, if this is truly a bad company which it may or may not be, then leave it be. The market dictates these things, not one individual and for you to spend anytime on this is only wasting your time. Fact is, if they are truly a bad company then they wont last long but if you think by promoting them, it's going to hurt them, it's probably not. Doing business online by it's very nature yields unhappy clients but by you spending time promoting it, you are only helping drive attention to their site and in turn giving a potentially bad business even more business.

My advice, leave it alone.

[Ajay]

Well said robert, however I would be an exception to the rule about curiousity causing me to signup for a service with a bad name.

btw, shouldn't you be removing that link in the post?

[robert]

Originally Posted by Ajay

Well said robert, however I would be an exception to the rule about curiousity causing me to signup for a service with a bad name.

btw, shouldn't you be removing that link in the post?

Most would be an exception, yes, however, just consider, the more a person puts into spreading the bad name, the more people see it and the more chances are that people will fall into that rule. Just imagine, if you spent 40 hours telling the world about a bad company, probably anywhere from 100 to 20k people will see that, and all it takes is 1%. It's all a numbers game and personally, i wouldn't give a company I disliked the satisfaction of new customers.

You have to ask the mods about the link? Personally, I say keep it ;)

[Ajay]

Hehe, it's your forum, was just suggesting removing the link ;)

I do agree on that concept. Long back I read about an actor (play actor) whose acting was so bad that news of it spread all over and people couldn't believe that someone could act so badly! In the process, he became rich.

I believe it is a true story, because I read it in a Facts and Wonders book.

[Dana]

Interesting.
I don't know if it's illegal. On my blog last week I was paid to sponsor something about a website that supposedly listed reports for people who were ripped off. Anyone could submit to this report and the report had really high rankings. There are currenly lawsuits against the owner of the report because he didn't validate or verify the complaints before adding informtion into the report. Then...he charged large amounts of money to the companies who complained about being wrongfully listed on the report to have their information taken OFF the report. I don't know how the lawsuit will turn out.
So, in my opinion by all means you can review the company negatively. (REVIEW STREAM: write review - get paid will pay for your review, btw and post it and index it online so you can tell your side of the story and it will be on the internet for the world to see) but I wouldn't go out of your way to damage their reputation incase you could be liable for it.