No Press Is Bad Press Even Online

otter42 writes "The NYTimes has an 8-page exposé on how an online business is thriving because of giant amounts of negative reviews. It seems that if you directly google the company you have no problem discerning the true nature; but if you instead only google the brand names it sells, the company is at the top of the rankings. Turns out that all the negative advertisement he generates from reputable sites gives him countless links that inflate his pagerank."

Comments

Hyperlinks and Pagerank 101

[Haedrian]

This shows the failure of how hyperlinks works and how the page rank algorithm works.

The Page rank algorithm determines how useful a site is based on the amount of hyperlinks TO the website. Each count is multiplied by how reputable a website is - so if its a huge website which brings in millions of users - then its more likely to be reputable than a website on a free host which gets 10 hits a year.

Now the problem with hyperlinks is that there is no semantic information attached to them - if you place a link on a page - there is no way to mark it as "This is a dangerous page" for example, or "This guy is an idiot, someone shut him up" or "This is an adverstiment, they have nothing to do with us". So the crawler notices a reputable website is linking on another site - and gives points accordingly.

The best solution is to add semantic information to hyperlinks - but that's not supported yet...

Re:Hyperlinks and Pagerank 101

[datapharmer]

sure there is, use rel="nofollow" if you don't want to share link love.

No need to RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to the NYT's valiant efforts, you can be spared from reading TFA: just check out the comic instead.

Nofollow?

[WPIDalamar]

Perhaps review sites should add nofollow attributes to their external links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow

Maybe just for negative reviews?

Re:Nofollow?

[janek78]

Or maybe not use hyperlinks? I mean, if I want to warn people about www.crazyscammer.com, why would I need to make it into a clickable link? I don't. Now he gets linked from NYTimes. Well done.

Re:The kneejerk reactions

[Blue Stone]

Let's not forget CitiBank who apparently didn't give a shit that someone fraudulently closed the woman's disputed charge.

I have an account run by CitiBank, and this has made me decide to close it - before I get subjected to their don't care approach.

4Chan assemble

[frap]

I wouldn't wish 4Chan's wrath on my worst enemy but it sounds like this guy needs a taste of his own medicine to me.

Re:4Chan assemble

[M4DP4RROT]

Unfortunately, TFA makes this guy sound like someone 4chan would worship, actually: a man who's made internet trolling into a successful business model! If anything, 4chan users are more likely to emulate than emasculate.

Short-sighted?

[jfengel]

It may be that the guy is raking in cash today, but he's not just being a jackass: he's committing crimes. It's fiendishly difficult to prosecute some kinds of online crimes, especially when routed through overseas sites, but this guy does not seem to be protecting himself.

It's always wise to be suspicious of "trend" stories, since newspapers love to spot a single instance, call it a "trend", and get everybody yapping. But even if there is a "trend" here, it'll get cut right short if this guy gets arrested.

Which may be the real purpose behind the piece: take an injustice that is too small for authorities to take notice, raise its profile, and take some satisfaction when the police step in.

There may well be a marketing tactic to be had in providing rotten customer service and benefiting from the links provided by sites too dumb to use "nofollow". But there's a line between "rotten service" and "outright fraud", and this guy is well over it.