Axandra news archive: 5 June 2007

• Facts of the week
• Search engine news of the week
• Articles of the week
• Recommended resources
• Previous articles

Disgruntled customers sometimes write negative comments about a company in their blogs or some of your competitors might like to damage your reputation by creating fake comments about your site.

No matter how good your company is, some people will always write something negative about your site, even if you tried your best to help them. What can you do if web pages with negative comments appear on the first result page for your company name?

1. Just ask

Send the webmaster of the web page in question a polite email and ask for removal of the negative comments. Be friendly and don't threaten the other person. Many webmasters will cooperate if you explain the issue.

2. Give web pages with positive comments a boost

Find web sites that contain positive comments about your site. Link to these pages from your own website to increase the link popularity of these pages. The web pages with the positive comments might get more inbound links and higher rankings then.

You could also suggest web pages with positive remarks about your website on social network sites such as Digg.

3. Use Wikis if appropriate

Websites like AboutUs.org allow you to create an article about your company. If your company is important enough, you might even create an entry in Wikipedia. These Wiki pages might also get listed when someone searches for your company name.

It's very important that you don't spam Wikis. Only add information about your company if it is appropriate. Spamming Wikis will backfire on you.

4. Ask for testimonials

If you receive positive feedback from customers, ask them to write a review on ConsumerReview.com, Epinions.com or similar sites.

5. Make sure that your own web site has the first position

If your own website comes first for your company name then most people will click on your link and don't look further. Use IBP to make sure that your own web site has position 1 in the search engine results.

Removing negative comments from the search engine results can take some time. It's best to avoid negative experiences at the outset by providing high quality products and good customer support.

If negative comments still appear on the Internet, use the tips above to restore the positive image of your company.

"Ask.com today launched a new results structure that packs in features and limits ads in hopes of gaining market share and bringing benefits to IAC’s wide array of holdings. [...]

Dubbed Ask3D, the revamped product has some similarities to Google’s recently launched Universal Search, incorporating images and videos in search results. But Ask is both more structured and has more bells and whistles."

"Previously, you were charged the same for traffic from all web sites within our distribution network. Now, with quality-based pricing, you may be charged less for certain clicks than you otherwise would pay, depending on the overall quality of the traffic provided by our distribution partners."

"Microsoft has gathered a team of twenty or more 'rock star' developers who’ve been tasked at building their next generation search engine. [...]

We have few details on their approach to the product, other than hearing that it is definitely a 'horizontal' engine (so, it’s not limited to a specific vertical like images), and is 'very cool.'"

Search engine newslets

• Yahoo! opens access to search marketing platform APIs.
• Full-featured gadgets for Google services.
• Google, like God, knows what you're doing.
• Trouble at Yahoo?
• A look at whom Google and Yahoo are hiring.
• So easy to send spam using Google Alerts.
• Declutter iGoogle.
• New domains registered to Google.
• Beta 2 of AOL local search now online.
• Google offers new details on its cellphone strategy.

"In this study, we compare the safety of leading search engines, using McAfee SiteAdvisor’s automated Web site ratings. We find that AOL returns the safest search results, while Yahoo! returns the greatest percentage of risky results."

"New feature integrates Google's AdSense targeted advertising platform into Maps, meaning the maps will now display ads as well as information."

What search engines know about us

"As Google comes under scrutiny over its privacy policies in Europe, our technology editor looks at the information that search engines and web services firms record about us."

How to get optimized web page content AND good inbound links

High rankings on Google, Yahoo and other major search engines are the result of optimized web page content and good inbound links. If you want to get high rankings then you need both.

Fortunately, IBP helps you to get your website to the top of the search results:

• Optimize your web page content.
• Optimize your inbound links.

IBP offers everything you need to get top rankings on major search engines. Download your copy here.

• Do no-follow links count for search engine rankings?
• New study: Which web page elements lead to high search engine rankings?
• Are search engine spammers exploiting your sitemaps file?
• Two new Google ranking patents
• The influence of semantic indexing on your search engine rankings
• What Google thinks about hidden and paid links
• Search engine submission with the new Sitemap protocol
• How to deal with Google's latest ranking algorithm changes
• What Google could do if they were evil
• View all past issues...