A very interesting and eye opening story on NY Times forced Google to look into their 'rank algorithm' again. Google has changed the way its search engine produces results for negative online reviews. It has come into notice that negative reviews which are usually followed by heaps of responses over them places that link at a higher position in Google ranking; in return playing a major role in generating revenue for such a company. 

Before we talk about what exactly Google did, let us give you a little background on a very interesting and somewhat disturbing story published by NY Times this weekend.

"A bully finds a pulpit on the web' by David Segal is a story about an online customer Ms. Rodriguez and bully merchant Mr. Vitaly Borker, a Brooklyn based online-seller for eyeglasses (DecorMyEyes). 

Ms. Rodriguez was among many unhappy customers who faced dire consequences for contacting Mr. Borker's customer support. She was in turn harassed and threatened for trying to file a complaint for receiving a product that she did not order at first place; she also noticed that the sunglasses that she did receive were fake. Well, of course they were...because Mr. Borker bought those from eBay and sold them further claiming them to be original designer products. 

She went ahead and spoke about it in the online community and this is exactly what Mr. Borker wanted...'Negative Marketing'. He believes that the more people talk about his website, more beneficial it turns out for him, because eventually he is getting ranked at top place in Google which in turn brings him more customers. "I've exploited this opportunity because it works. No matter where they post their negative comments, it helps my return on investment. So I decided, why not use that negativity to my advantage?' boosts Mr. Borker. (Read entire story here)  

Naturally, since this directly raised fingers at legendary search engine 'Google', it became imperative for them to take action for some damage control. "We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodriguez's dreadful experience. Even though our initial analysis pointed to this being an edge case and not a widespread problem in our search results, we immediately convened a team that looked carefully at the issue. That team developed an initial algorithm solution, implemented it, and the solution is already live. I am here to tell you that being bad, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google's search results." announced Amit Singhal in Google's blog.  

Google page ranks often raises those links that has maximum number of sites pointing at (sharing) that link. Amit Singhal shares that more than negative reviews, its the buzz around the net that took Mr. Borker's site to new heights (that is why we didn't link back to Vitaly Borker's site). While bad publicity may be negative marketing but it 'still' is marketing and is annoyingly more viral than any authentic marketing campaign. In answer to this Google writes:

"We developed an algorithm solution that detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor experience. The algorithm we incorporated in our search rankings represents an initial solution to this issue." Further adding, "We can say with reasonable confidence that being bad to customers is bad for business on Google."

Although this is not a full proof method or solution to a loophole that many have been taking advantage of, but thanks to the enlightening article by the Times, that atleast this issue has been taken into consideration and has given 'Google's engineers' something to ponder on.