RipOffReport.com - a website many are familiar with as they have stumbled upon it when they are searching for a company online. Sometimes you never even get to that companies website - I mean, they seem to be ripping people off online!

But Wired reports that Ripoff Report founder Ed Magedson claims he is suffering from attacks by ‘Internet Terrorists’ who are pushing his highly ranked pages in search engines down a few notches. “SEOs, on the other hand, say Magedson is basically extorting money out of clients.”

I believe RipOff Report had great intentions to provide feedback from customers about companies. Pure, unedited complaints from real people. People who wish to check on a company prior to doing business with them would only be smart to refer to such a directory if one existed. Prior to the Internet, one had to rely on the Yellow Pages and a phone call to the Better Business Bureau. But online, things are real-time. And on-line, things last ‘forever.’

Then, the sites became popular. The more traffic, the more ads, the more money.

‘Forever,’ is a major part of the problem. While companies can experience bad times for many reasons - like Bear Stearns over the last week - things may be 100% better the remainder of the time. Companies experience troubles through their years of growth from inexperience, bad decisions and growing pains when volume is increasing in multiples. The Internet is not so forgiving as the actual customers themselves. While a company can do wrong, apologize, make everything good - the customer is now satisfied and very will will continue to shop with you. The catch is, any complaints that customer put online live on, forever, published on each of the websites who was willing to ‘listen’ when they were really frustrated and upset.

While many of these ‘complaint’ sites provide the opportunity for users to add comments or updates to their statement - they generally cannot alter the prior post. It’s written in stone on the internet. Plus, frustration was the motivating factor to post online, and to punish. There is no motivating factor for the consumer to ensure they ‘update’ those online posts, if a facility is available.

Since the subject of these complaints is often “Company X doesn’t ship on time” or “Company Y won’t take returns,” these most often become the page title, often pre-pended with the company name, just to make sure in case they don’t put it in the title. Often, these pages also include links back to the site being ‘reported’ as well. With an incredible page title, rich with the company name, perhaps twice, page content that starts off with a heading of the complaint title and company name, and/or link back to the vendor, these pages are ranked very high in the search engines. The repetitive nature of the company name and the link, rated highly by Google in most cases, back to the retailer make these greatly optimized pages for the search engines.

A Common Target: Ranking (and Money)

Search engines are the target for everyone attempting to get traffic online, isn’t it? The more page views, the more ad views - ads even for the vendor being complained about, right on the page with their complaint. The more ad views, the more clicks, the more revenue to the operator.

The problem is these pages often outrank pages from the resellers themselves, providing a deterrent to traffic intended on making purchases from the vendor. A friend tells you Company Z is a great place to shop. You go online, Google ‘Company Z’ and the first three listings in the search engines are listed as ‘Company Z Fails to Issue Refunds - Complaints.com,’ ‘Company Z sucks - never shipped my stuff! - Ratings.com,’ and ‘Company Z - CompanyZ total Ripoff - TrueRatings.com’.

Would you click on one of them, saying ‘oh my…’ then deciding maybe your friend’s advice wasn’t as good as they may have thought? They must have ‘lucked out’ and had a good experience by chance. This is why retailers are all up in arms.

A quick Google search about RipOffReport.com and it’s founder will provide you a treasure trove of information from people who are quite empassioned about their complaints about the site and it’s operation. I don’t have any direct knowledge of any of their statements, but it’s volume says plenty.

The longevity and high-ranking of these pages, which may be content that is 2, 5 or more years old - or simply reports information that is that old, continue to be a thorn in the side of the retailers long after the customer has been made whole. This is every retailers problem. When a company processes $10MM in shipments a day, something is bound to go wrong with at least a few of those orders. Perfection can be worked toward, but the sheer scale lends to some amount of failure. But these failures, even if 1% of all orders, accumulate and over time simply create a huge ‘hill’ of problems. The higher volume the retailer, the more there will be - this ever increasing number of pages are a bane to online retailers existence.

Lots of Traffic, High Rankings

Interesting enough, RipOffReport.com has lots more traffic than the online version of the Better Business Bureau. Complaints.com, another consumer complaint site, receives even less traffic. (View statistics on Alexa)

What to do?

Every methodology of resolution to the issues and posting where it is allowed, or commenting where it is allowed, contacting the site directly aren’t enough. They often fail and the site stands by their ‘credibility’ to ensure people have access to this information. So what are online marketers to do? Create pages which rank higher than those on these offending sites in order to draw attraction away from the negativity and get traffic to the retailers website. Many retailers often pay high to ensure placement on the top 2 ads in Google results to just be above many of these ‘complaint’ sites.

Having a goal to be listed above these pages is a good thing - achieving it - with all the challenges which multiply by the day - is another. Now that some of these companies have been effective in beating Ed at his own game, he’s feeling the pinch.

Ed explained how he ‘lost count’ of how many times he’s been sued in the Wired piece.

Where there is smoke, there is fire.

Source: Wired: Rip Off Report Founder Says ‘Internet Terrorists’ Out to Get Him