

HN Please Help, Google is ruining my business - jdileo

Over the course of nine years I bootstrapped and built a company that resulted in 90 terrific employees, &#62;$12M in revenues and tens of thousands of clients happily served.<p>However, two clients that did not leave happy have made it almost impossible for me to continue.  Why?  Because they posted their experience (80% untrue), on blogs and now whenever somebody google's my name these terrible comments are in the 1 and 2 spot.<p>I am an MBA not a technologist, please tell me is there anything I can do to fight this and re-claim my good name?
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grellas
Normally, the only effective _legal_ remedy for this precise problem is to
file a lawsuit for libel and seek injunctive relief, asking a court to order
that the items be taken down.

This is usually a tough case, and expensive to pursue. If the items are
clearly defamatory, however, then either (1) any injunctive order you might
get or (2) any fear of a large money judgment you might instill in the persons
propagating the lies might get you the relief you seek.

A strong demand letter from an attorney might also shake them up and get some
action.

There is also a measure of gamesmanship that claimants sometimes use in such
matters. For example, a well-known "patent troll" sued an in-house lawyer from
Cisco in a recent much-publicized libel case for blog postings to the effect
that the troll had conspired with court clerks to alter the filing date of a
complaint where such filing date was critical to the outcome of a case. Owing
to liberal jurisdictional rules, the parties involved (including Cisco) were
forced to defend the case in a remote forum (in Texas) where sympathies were
strong in favor of the claimant.

All this turns on the specific facts. If the statements have a color of truth
about them and constitute a customer's exercise of free speech rights, you may
have an uphill fight in getting formal legal relief.

Of course, there may well be steps you can take here besides the purely legal
but I assume you will consider these as well.

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mbrubeck
Even if you think you _can_ win in court, it may not be your best option. You
risk bringing even more attention to your critics, and creating more Google
results that are about the court case rather than about your business. I side
with the suggestion to move on, generate positive coverage, and hope the
criticism is eventually ignored or forgotten.

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branden
Make your other clients happy enough that they freely and enthusiastically
detail their positive experiences on the web.

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AlphaEvolve
Agree.

Google has absolutely nothing to do with this. Google is actually the way you
could resolve this.

To turn this into action, probably the most efficient way to work on this is
to provide your current happy customers with a testimonials page on your
current corporate blog.

To collect feedbacks from your current clients, do a survey by email (ex:
surveymonkey.com) and provide a discount on your service or a special offer
for all clients that fill in the survey (even the angry ones). No matter what,
this survey will give you analytic data on how your clients percieve your
services. Listen to your clients, there might be something you're missing out
on too.

Focus on facts! You said that 80% of what was said is untrue, then you clearly
need to demonstrate on your website that your not only provide great service
to "counter argue" the 80%, but you also need to show that the 20% that was
true is something of the past and that you resolved (with facts) the issue. Do
it in a professional manner. It's all about making the first good impression
for new potential clients.

Also you said you have 90 employees, try to give them a way to express their
great experience working in your firm. Provide your employee the possibily to
write a blog a week, or even better create a subdomain per department and
provide public news (press release).

Google any firm name, if you really look hard for it, you will probably find
unhappy customers saying how much company x or y sucks. This is not uncommon.

You can -in conjuction- always have your lawfirm work on this, but dont forget
to Focus your resources on providing a voice to the happy customers of yours
(and employees).

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zck
You want SEO (search engine optimization). Basically, it's getting your
website to rank highly on Google. I don't have any experience there, so I
can't give you names of who to talk to.

Basically, I'd recommend a few things: 1\. Get a website
(yourcompanyname.com). You can't rank higher than they do if you have no site.
2\. Make it useful. This will encourage people to link to your site. The more
links you have, the higher you'll rank.

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bhousel
Technically, Google isn't the one ruining your business...

Though I agree with the other commenters. Get a lawyer and go after the blog
postings. If what they are saying is really "80% untrue" and it's causing you
a loss of business, they may be guilty of libel.

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makecheck
I'm not a lawyer; but it's possible to charge someone for defamation. This may
help: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation>

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vijayr
Not sure Google (or any search engine) can help you much in this. If your
clients are lying, its best to talk to a lawyer.

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stakent
Don't wait, contact the lawyer.

This is not original but true.

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nirmal
What is the name of your company?

