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"Customer Experience" is a critical piece of the Marketing Mix...and Google changed it's algorithm

by Jack Duncan
8 replies
Warriors,
A few days ago you may have seen a thread about the website "DecorMyEyes.com" and their shady business plan.

The New York Times ran a piece that detailed how the owner of the website was actually gloating about his horrible reviews...because he was getting tons of backlinks (from negative reviews) and it was driving up his rankings and his sales.

Obviously, that's not the way to run a business.

In that thread, there was some speculation about how Google would respond, and if "customer experience" would somehow be a new factor in internet marketing.

Surprisingly, I noticed this today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/te...ng.html?src=me

Google changed their algorithm yesterday.

Google now factors customer experience into their ranking algorithm.

Bad Customer Reviews = Poor Rankings

The game is changing again.

While customer experience has always been an important part of the Marketing Mix, it will be imperative to place an extra emphasis on this moving forward.

I've seen some really excellent material on this recently, including a great piece about sending "consumption emails" to your customers to help them consume even more of your products and services. (Thank you Anita Ashland)

Do you have a "Consumption Autoresponder"?

Also, I saw some great info about how Joe Polish is using printed thank you cards to ratchet up his customer experience. And he isn't just sending one either...

I love this time of year because in addition to thinking about gratitude and thankfulness, there is an emphasis of future planning as the year comes to an end and a new year begins.

I'm going to be thinking quite a bit about how to include outrageous/unusual ways to boost the overall customer experience in all of my marketing...

Beyond the idea of a "Consumption Autoresponder" and "Printed Thank You's", what are some other ideas for creating a customer experience that makes an impact?

What are you most Outrageous...Unbelievable..."Knock-Their-Socks-Off"..."Customer Experience Boosting" ideas...?
#affiliate marketing #algorithm #changed #critical #customer experience #google #internet marketing #make money online #marketing #mixand #piece #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    Good point. I think anyone who works with the Google Places system will agree with this since it's a massive focus for Google when assessing small business listings. It's actually very interesting doing the research to see which keywords Google actually associates with and gives weight regarding customer experience and reviews.
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    nothing to see here.

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  • Profile picture of the author scortillion
    not sure how Google does it rating review but it's good to see someone abusing the system get knocked off the top of the list. And you're right it's a very bad way to do business.
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  • Profile picture of the author MichaelHiles
    I actually made a post this morning on my blog about all businesses being brand marketers whether they want to be or not - INCLUDING internet marketing business.

    That's because the "brand" is the entire summation of the customer's experience, and already exists transcendent of any intention or effort on the part of the business owner.

    That being said, I don't know whether or not Google has any real place in being the arbitration of a company's visibility based on backlinks from a gripe site. What's to stop a competitor from astroturfing a bunch of consumer review sites and panning their competition? It's sort of like the card catalog at a library automatically removing an index to a book because a bunch of other readers didn't like it. The credibility of the information resource itself is in jeopardy based on someone else's opinion. Google didn't like China pressuring it to censor it's search results, but Google sees fit to not let people make their own decisions? I'm not sure that this is a good thing really. Bad precedent.
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  • Profile picture of the author techvic
    Glad to hear Google is factoring customer experience into the mix.

    I found out the other day that you page ranking is also influenced by how long you've had your domain and how long you've registered your domain for (in the future).

    We went ahead and registered some of our top domains for 9 years after discovering this.
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  • Profile picture of the author bgmacaw
    Originally Posted by Jack Duncan View Post

    In that thread, there was some speculation about how Google would respond, and if "customer experience" would somehow be a new factor in internet marketing.

    Surprisingly, I noticed this today:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/te...ng.html?src=me

    Google changed their algorithm yesterday.

    Google now factors customer experience into their ranking algorithm.
    While I can't read the full article since it's behind their subscription wall now, it's most likely total BS that they've had some big algorithmic change. I think their "algorithm change" is probably a combination of the plain old manual STFU penalty and discounting links from well known customer complaint sites.

    But, in case I'm wrong and they're using game-able rankings in their algorithm, I think there's a need for a new WSO that will EXPLOIT this GOOGLE LOOPHOLE to EXPLODE your rankings and CRUSH THE COMPETITION!!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author kindsvater
    Now some marketers will be anonymously trashing their competitors on every gripe site they can find just to try and get an SEO advantage.

    My opinion: due to the bad publicity and article in the NY times Google was forced to respond. It may have done something with regards to the one website in the news, and that is technically an algorithm change, but I doubt there is a wholesale change due to the mischief this could cause.
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  • Profile picture of the author whateverpedia
    UPDATE:

    Vitaly Borker has just been arrested.

    “Vitaly Borker, 34, who operates a Web site called decormyeyes.com, was charged with one count each of mail fraud, wire fraud, making interstate threats and cyberstalking. The mail fraud and wire fraud charges each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The stalking and interstate threats charges carry a maximum sentence of five years.”
    Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/bu...=borker&st=cse
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