Camelot Castle Hotel: down the online reputation rabbit-hole

Jun 13 | by Sam Deeks | WARNING!!
12 Comments

Camelot Castle Hotel’s use as a Scientology recruitment and training center sparks growing online reputation crisis

Jun 13th 2010

Before today, I didn’t know Camelot Castle Hotel in Tintagel, Cornwall existed. It probably would have stayed that way had not a family member and their partner returned from a stay there, full of horror stories about the place.

These weren’t your run-of-the-mill ‘what a dreadful dump’ kind of comments. Oh, no. These were of the ‘this place literally scared the shit out of us’ kind. Say what?? That’s quite a reaction. You’ve got my full attention now.

A quick visit to TripAdvisor (have your pinch of salt ready) reveals 182 ‘excellent’ reviews and 124 ‘terrible’ reviews.  Such extreme polarisation of opinion is unusual and a good sign that something odd is going on and the problem is that Joe Public suddenly wants to know “what?”.

Read the reviews yourself and make up your own mind which are credible and which are not.  Would you stay there?

The negative reviews are extraordinarily critical of the owners and of a peculiar – and less than transparent – agenda. You would be forgiven for thinking that the hotel’s purpose might be to ensure your satisfaction as a paying customer. It isn’t – as this page quickly demonstrates. It seems they’re out to make a better world through art and creativity. According to this press release, if you’re an artist (or just think you are) then you’re welcome to stay at the hotel as long as you like for free.

By the time you’ve read the hotel’s own disconcerting copy on its website and the TripAdvisor and Holiday Watchdog reviews it’s hard not to start to feel uneasy about the connection between the owners of this hotel and the ‘Church of Scientology’.

A quick standard Google search for “Camelot Castle Hotel” reveals (as you’d expect) a P1 of Google stuffed full of neutral references (apart from this lone article now). These include the hotel’s own website plus a range of other tourism directory listings. Nothing unusual there.  In fact, almost nothing on the first 5 or 6 pages cause concern. Except this one listing on P2 beginning: “It takes a lot to freak me…” [update: this has since changed considerably]

But search for “Camelot Castle Hotel scientology” or “camelot castle scientology” and things will get much more interesting. Very quickly, you’ll find yourself encountering owner John Mappin, his Khazakh wife Irina and artist Ted Stourton. A little more research on all three gets even more interesting – not least Mappin’s short career as ‘porn film’ actor and his defeat in the High Court in a sordid fraud case.  But these things are really only the beginning.

What does this odd threesome have to do with scientology?  [They have since gone public about their 20+ years as dedicated Scientologists]. I recommend you read some of the comments and check out some of the links on this site here and this site here and read this press release before you make up your own mind.  Pretty soon, you’ll find yourself looking at a ‘religion’ that appears to have more bad things said about it than good things than any other you can think of.

Having read all this, you hope that these reviews and commentators are joking. I mean, c’mon – a cult centre masquerading as a hotel in the heart of sleepy Cornwall? Puh-lease. That’s what I thought when my family members texted me from inside their locked hotel room. But what they told me is confirmed by the all the research I’ve done since.

If you’re still not decided, then you could read Camelot Castle’s creepy ‘Westminster Independent’ newspaper, published by John Mappin who has declared that he will never again publish anything but positive news – particularly pseudo-news like articles such as ‘The Truth About Drugs’ which quickly leads you first to the ‘Foundation for a drug free world‘, and from there to Narconon -  a Scientology front organisation.

If you get as far as the serious allegations that staff are forced to study Scientology materials disguised as ‘business training’ (get your Google translator out) then you’d be forgiven for being worried.

Mappin and Stourton are fully-documented, fee-paying Scientologists, there’s no doubt about that but the fact that they have been less than upfront about their agenda no doubt fuels many of the harshest online hotel reviews.

I don’t know about you but the one thing I want from a hotel is that it’s clean, in every sense of the word – above and below the surface.  And that it exists first and foremost to accommodate me and satisfy my needs. What I wouldn’t want is dingy rooms, mouldy walls, Port-a-loo sanitation, hard sells of bad paintings, connections with Scientology or creepy personalities with sleazy pasts. But hey, that’s just me.

The moral of the story? It’s one that so many businesses get wrong. Hotel guests (like any business’s customers) expect you to serve them, not your own pet ideologies. Mix those two up and they won’t just feel dissatisfied, they’ll feel swindled.

When all’s said and done, an online reputation rabbit hole as deep and as bad as this one is the product of some very poor decisions. No matter how unpleasant it is to accept, the fact is that you simply can’t blame everyone else for the disconcerting impression that you’ve created through your own actions.

Update: 08/07/10 – today I got a threatening phone call from someone claiming to be a Church of Scientology minister in the USA (he withheld his number of course).

He demanded to know what I had against John Mappin and Scientology.

From the outset, he did that Scientology ‘handling‘ thing I’ve since learned about. According to L. Ron Hubbard, anyone who disagreed with Scientology is a criminal.  They’re trained to assault you with accusations about you, your past, your CRIMES rather than answer the question you asked them or address the issue you raised about their ‘church’.

Watch this very revealing video of scientologists ‘handling’ a critic and you’ll get a very good idea of the experience.

A couple of minutes into the call, I couldn’t resist saying to him “I’m sorry, Minister Jeffries, that is by far the worst fake American accent I’ve ever heard.  Now if you’ll do me the honour of dropping it, perhaps we can talk?”  He took great offense – but amusingly (and entirely unsurprisingly) by the end of the call, he had just about forgotten he was supposed to be doing it.

Sadly, he didn’t answer my question: are anonymous and threatening calls to anyone who disagrees with you  a central tenet of Scientology? When you’ve done a little research, you’ll find the answer to that question is a resounding ‘yes’.  Anyone who disagrees with them is branded as a member of a ‘hate group’ and targeted for legal, professional and personal attack.

Take the recent attacks on Welsh councillor John Dixon for example. Or, if you want something a little more sinister – how about the story of how Scientology bankrupted then took over the Cult Awareness Network, so that today, worried parents looking for advice on how to get their kids out of dangerous cults get advised by… yes, you’ve got it – Scientologists.

Those are examples of what L.Ron called his ‘Fair Game’ policy which states that any critic of Scientology should be destroyed by any and all methods available – legal or otherwise.

It’s now been a couple of months since I posted about this hotel and in that time, I’ve observed the reputation crisis around this hotel growing deeper by them moment.  There is now a 45+ page long thread on the WhyWeProtest forum which has exposed fully the extend of these peoples’ activities and their plans for Scientology in this region.  It goes beyond the quirky and into the downright sinister.

There is also another site about Camelot Castle Hotel and Scientology that has appeared in the last few months. The people behind that site (like those in the WhyWeProtest forum) believe that this hotel is fast becoming a problem for TripAdvisor because they believe it is faking its own positive reviews.  It seems that TripAdvisor has now become aware of this problem and taken steps to remove a small number of suspect reviews but it will be interesting to watch to see what develops.

My original post was a response to the personal experience of a family member who stayed at the hotel and was – to put it frankly – freaked out by the state of the accommodation and the owners.  I did some research in Google and was amazed at what I found – a very interesting situation from an online reputation management point of view. What I’ve discovered since is that Scientology is its own very worst enemy from a PR perspective.  You’d be hard-pushed to think of how to do it worse – which is the gist of the post (below).

Scientologists seem to believe that everybody else has got it wrong and that people should go to the Scientology website to find out about the church and its founder.  That’s a bit like a hotel saying ‘don’t read the 1 star reviews on TripAdvisor, go to our website to find out what it’s really like here’. That approach, in today’s context, it’s practically deluded. Whether you like it or not, people take more notice of what other people are saying about you than they do of your propaganda.

Unlike the person who called to ‘handle’ me, I’m a believer in free speech. ‘Minister Jeffries’ you are welcome to comment here using your real, verifiable name [I'm still waiting].

By the way, for your information, I did report your call and threat to the police.

Peter Popoff: online reputation disaster represents no hindrance to religious scammer

Jun 13 | by Sam Deeks | Scambusters!, scam
12 Comments

Peter Popoff exploits people’s greed, need and vulnerability for financial benefit according to Google results

I happen to agree with that view. So did the highly respected James Randi (who demonstrated Popoff’s wife feeding him ‘divine information’ via radio link in his live ‘ministries’) and so do most of the people writing about Peter Popoff online.

I came across Popoff last night, flipping channels after England’s depressing performance in their World Cup opener. Clare and I watched Popoff and his charming wife Liz promising ’supernatural debt cancellation’ in return for nothing more than writing in to request their miracle water gift.

A gift which, of course, then turns into floods of direct mail with ever-increasing demands for money – ’seed gifts’ – to help God to get started sorting out your debt problems.  According to Popoff, you can’t expect God to supernaturally cancel your debt unless you stump up something yourself first. It’s the religious version of the Nigerian funds transfer fee.

Despite having declared himself bankrupt following Randi’s high-profile debunking on American TV (easily available on YouTube) Peter Popoff today pulls in millions of dollars a year through his latest direct mail operation – and pays himself and all the members of his family millions in salaries too. First time round the target was believers with health problems.  Now, in the shadow of the credit crunch, it’s believers with debt problems.

For someone with a really bad online reputation, he’s doing far better than he should – and raises a question about how important online reputation is to a business.  The answer, of course (and Popoff will know this all too well) lies in the likelihood of his intended victims – sorry, ‘market’ – using Google to critically evaluate the things they’re presented with.

Judging by the audience profile at his ministry events shown on TV last night, I’d say that this likelihood was low, to say the least, reminding us that online reputation is only a meaningful concept to those who are already critical and use the web to do some form of due diligence before making decisions.

That greedy, insecure, grubby little people exploit other greedy, vulnerable and grubby people is absolutely no surprise to me. It’s everywhere – scratch the surface of everything British these days and you’ll find this sleaze. What does surprise me is that Peter Popoff can be still pushing this scam on TV and there’s not a watchdog or body that can – or will – stop it.

MacIntyre and Dodd Marketing, Peter Popoff.  Just two – but there are tens of thousands more and our culture gives them carte blanche to operate. Disgusting.

Social media fatigue

Jun 9 | by Sam Deeks | business insight
3 Comments

Deeply unfashionable though it might be to admit this, but the truth is I’m bored with social media

I never got into Facebook. I tried to use it for a couple of months but it just infuriated me. The benefits in no way matched the value of my personal data. Despite people telling me “it’s just about being sociable..” I quit over a year ago. That’s not strictly true. I have a Facebook account for my cat where I post pictures of her friends and victims.

I tried to use Twitter for a year or so, but found myself stuck reading tweets from the same hundred and fifty or so people.  It turned out that I wasn’t interested enough to go find more people to follow. Since I never followed anyone who followed me just for the sake of it, my Twitter network stalled about there. And like many people, I got bored of the spam and the social media gurus talking endlessly about…yes, you’ve guessed it, social media.

I joined Xing and connected with a girlfriend from a long time ago,  but apart from that, didn’t use it. I quit Ecademy after a couple of years listening to people bullshitting about their egos and prowess.  I spend a year commenting in 4Networking, UKBF, UKBusiness Labs and other such forums until I got tired of the inevitability that everything online degenerates to argument and abuse.

I still have a LinkedIn profile but, like many people, still don’t quite know why – although I quite like the way that LinkedIn seems to be following the ’softly, softly, catchee monkey’ approach and avoiding the vulgar rush to ‘monetize’ that has characterised most of the other online networks.

I’ve joined and left hundreds of social media sites, without the slightest sense of loss of anything I cared about or couldn’t do without.

Throughout that time, I’ve also been doing more and more work in the real world and less and less in the online world. Coincidentally (not!), my real world network has increased; I’m doing more valuable and fulfilling work and enjoying it far more and I’m learning a lot beside.  The range of opportunities open to me has increased in inverse proportion to the amount of energy and time I’ve spent online.

In the last year alone, I’ve traveled to India, Taiwan, Spain, Norway and the US on real-world business, earning a real world salary and working working on real-world projects with real people. It’s been great and most important of all, it’s been interesting.

I can’t help noticing that the more successful and confident I feel, the less appealing spending time on social media becomes.

Am I alone in that?

Expo Guide scam: can we help people before they become victims?

May 22 | by Sam Deeks | scam warning, what do you think?
No Comments

It’s great to have helped so many people avoid paying these scammers – but can we help them avoid becoming victims in the first place?

Since I blogged about the big online directory scams (particularly Expo Guide and World Business Directory) a couple of years ago, I’ve had on average 100 visitors a day to these posts.

Every one of several hundreds of comments on these posts comes from someone who has fallen victim to these scams.  Thankfully, after reading other peoples’ comments, the majority of those take a stand and refuse to pay. It’s also clear that a number have already paid at least one ‘installment’ of around €1000 to these scammers.

It’s great that my posts are right at the top of Google for “Expo Guide”.  That makes it easy for people to find this information when the nasty shock arrives in the form of a phone call from Expo Guide’s ‘debt collection’ agency or a written demand. And it’s great to use this blog format to collect reassuring comments from other non-paying victims – all of which boost the visitors confidence to hold out.  This site and your comments must have saved people tens of thousands of pounds and immeasurable heartache and worry.

But here’s the question: given that not one single one of the dozen or so major Government backed fraud-prevention, consumer-protection agency sites has any information whatsoever on these scams, how can we raise awareness of this before people sign the form and get into trouble?

Another problem with these scams is that there are no figures of how many people in the UK have actually lost money to these scams, completed their fraudulent forms or simply received them.

So what do you think we can do to inform the average small business owner in the UK about these scams before they become a victim of one?

Breaking with a difficult client

May 22 | by Sam Deeks | business insight
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Letting a difficult client go can be an uncomfortable process – but it has to be done

This morning, I had a call from someone who is now, finally, an ex-client – and probably an ex-friend as well. The conversation was difficult for both of us but by the end of it, there was a conclusion.

Despite the discomfort, it was vital that we had that conversation and stopped the project because otherwise we’d be carrying this unresolved business forward…probably forever :-)

So what was the difficulty? This client is one of those people who wants a website she can add things to herself, but has no idea about the process required to make one or maintain one. We agreed that I would build a Wordpress site for her.

After several months of trying, I realised that she was never going to get clear about what she wanted.  She changed her mind regularly and we couldn’t stick with one thing long enough for us to develop it properly. The end result is that she has a site, but it’s undeveloped – it’s the last in a series of false-starts. And even if it was complete, she still wouldn’t have the understanding required to use it.

I put in three or four times more time and work than the £400 fee I was paid, but eventually I had to call time on the project and tell her that it wasn’t in either of our interests to continue the process.  I offered to refund her half the money.

I felt it was the fairest solution considering the amount of work I put in set against her expectation of getting a website. I was also grateful that she brought her business to me when times were tight.

Looking back, I realise now that I shouldn’t have accepted her business in the first place – for her sake and for mine.

So how can you avoid it? I think it’s pretty simple. Next time you come across a client you shouldn’t work with, I believe that there will be a little voice inside you saying “Stop! It’s not worth it”

I didn’t listen to that voice. So make sure you do. And make sure that no matter how much you think you need the money, remember that you need peace of mind even more.

In today’s difficult conversation, both of us were working hard to be respectful, self-respecting and calmly assertive about getting our needs met. I’m proud of behaving that way in a difficult conversation – and I hope that she is too.

Down the rabbit hole of online reputation

May 14 | by Sam Deeks | critical approach to online media, marketing
2 Comments

Following the online reputation White Rabbit leads me to ask questions of yet another online business directory

This is what I love about the internet. Follow any White Rabbit that passes, and before you know it, you’re falling down a rabbit hole that leads to only one place: Dodgyland.

Come with me on a journey.

It all begins with noticing a tweet on my Twitter search widget (over there on the nav bar) about ‘online reputation management’.  I click the link which takes me to a blog page about managing your reputation by creating fake identities and fake content to test the ‘Google’ visibility of certain platforms and directories. Mmmm ok. I have views on that, but another time. Read on.

I note the name of the poster: Ehud Furman. A quick Google search shows Ehud is the founder of a service called ‘LookUpPage’ a service that seems to offer you a business web page with a claim that ‘95% of LookUpPage Pro users are featured on the first page of Google’. Uh-oh. That’s torn it – you went and triggered my ‘online directory’ alarm! Blast it – now I’ve just got to go and have a closer look :-)

So I delve into the business directory, determined to test the benefits on offers to a random premium (paying) member.  I scroll down to find our lucky winner, one Mr. Jimmy Petruzzi who appears to be a NLP practitioner in Manchester.

So, first of all, I take a look at Jimmy’s LookUpPage page. I notice he’s attached a custom domain name to it. First thing that strikes me is that it’s all a bit messy, but, hey, if it provides useful Google visibility for his business, then maybe it’s worth it?

How can I tell if it’s worth paying for a premium listing in an online business directory?

You can use my time-honoured Deek-O-Matic Online Directory Tester:

1) First I search Google for “nlp trainer manchester” – the kind of basic search phrase you’d think Jimmy would want prospects to find him for. However, neither his own website or his LookUpPage appear on the first couple of pages for that phrase.

2) I then look at his LookUpPage header to see what key phrases are in it and then do a search on ‘Jimmy Petruzzi’ and ‘NLP centre of excellence‘ both of which return his LookUpPage on P1 of Google.

It appears that for his money, all Jimmy gets is listings on P1 of Google for two completely uncompetitive terms: his own name and that of his company. Waaah. He could – and in fact, does – achieve this same result with his own website. Doinggg???

There’s an important point to make here: the average directory punter who doesn’t quite get how Google works thinks that this is a result. It isn’t. The whole point of search engine marketing is to be found in Google search results for the keywords that the prospects you want to do business with actually type into Google. Being found for your own name or the specific name of your business ISN’T an achievement for two simple reasons: 1) because they’re not hotly contested key phrases and 2) because people typing them by default already know you and your business exist. Doh.

Anyone giving you the impression that getting your name / business name into P1 of Google results will generate business for you is seriously misleading you – not least because you could just as easily do this yourself (as Jimmy already has).

So what is the benefit to him of paying for this service? You tell me.

Conclusion

This test shows that a premium listing with this directory brings Jimmy no real-world benefit at all because it doesn’t offer him any Google visibility to new prospects (people who don’t already know him & his business). 

But it points to a bigger problem: that customers of this kind of directory, by definition, don’t understand the distinctions I’ve just made. With that in mind and coupled with sales pitches that strongly suggest increased business as a benefit of membership (as was the case in a recent well-document case on this site) it’s hard not to conclude that this lack of understanding suits online directories.

You can tell I’m being restrained here. To be blunt about Google marketing, there’s no easy or cheap way to get your products into the public eye in a competitive market.

Something else I don’t think Jimmy understands is that LookUpPage adds a final, self-serving twist to his premium listing:

You can see the company that sells the listing has used half of the meta description to promote itself. Nifty.

I’ve been doing this common-sense test for years now, and the majority of the online directory services I’ve tested don’t appear to offer any benefits.

If I’ve got it wrong, please let me know. I don’t mean come here and get angry and defensive; I mean come here, read my critique carefully then respond in testable, black and white terms exactly what the benefits on offer are.

Jimmy, if you’re reading this, I hope business is going well. If you have a view on anything I’ve written here then please feel free to comment.

Online reputation management case study: VoloTV listens to feedback, makes changes

May 14 | by Sam Deeks | feedback, online reputation management
No Comments

My brief encounter with VoloTV shows the basics of good reputation management – with an extra ingredient

Proof you can use a laptop in a VoloTV seat

Earlier this week I found myself in a train seat staring at a newly-installed VoloTV screen that was unexpected, a bit too close for comfort and impossible to switch off.  The 3 colleagues travelling with me felt the same – so, by way of feedback, covered the screens with large-scale bright orange Post-It notes saying how we felt.  Later, I blogged and tweeted about it.

The next day, I got a call from Yeshpaul Soor, the MD of VoloTV thanking me for the feedback (‘I’ve got your notes here in my office’) and assuring me that he was resetting ALL the VoloTVs in the First Great Western network so that the customer (and non-customer) alike will be able to switch it off.  He then invited me to visit the VoloTV office to learn about the system and get set up for some free viewing on my trip home to Plymouth.

Simple online reputation done really well:

1) Monitor the web for news items, blog posts and particularly Twitter tweets about your business

2) Go out of your way to connect with those people – pick up the phone!

3) Admit what you’ve done wrong and offer to put it right

4) Go the ‘extra mile’ to win the respect of your critics

And the extra ingredient?

Having first chosen to locate VoloTV in the distinctly unglamorous bowels of Paddington Station, Yeshpaul Soor then made it his business to get to know everyone there – from the gateline staff to the train cleaners.  The same cleaners who picked up our feedback notes and took them to him within 30 minutes of our having written them.

Is VoloTV for me? Not really – but that’s just a matter of taste, and with a business model that only needs 7% of passenger journeys to pay, VoloTV can afford me not to be a paying customer. I found myself listening to several episodes of Outnumbered while Tweeting and playing Scrabble on my iPhone. The sound and picture quality is great but I’m not much of a TV watcher at the best of times. About the only thing I did look up for was highlights of a 2006 football match between Liverpool and Arsenal where Peter Crouch scored a hat-trick and got to keep the match ball. Nice.

I suspect that I’ll carry on booking myself into the Quiet Carriage for my journeys but one thing’s certain: with a willingness to listen to and act on difficult feedback, VoloTV has earned my respect and improved it’s online reputation at the same time.

Volo TV: in-your-face TV oversteps the mark

May 11 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, what do you think?
7 Comments

First Great Western’s Volo TV oversteps the mark and invades my personal space

Click to enlarge

**WED MAY 12th UPDATE**

As a result of our feedback and this post, Paul Soor, MD of Volo TV contacted me today to tell me that the company is abandoning the ‘can’t switch it off’ policy that I complained about in this post. The reprogramming will take 1 – 2 days but Paul assures me that it is definitely going ahead.

He has also invited me to stop by the office to discuss my feedback and to try out the system for free on my trip to Plymouth tomorrow.

Paul’s getting in touch is an example of good social media monitoring and a willingness to hear and act on feedback -to his and the company’s credit.

****************************************************

ORIGINAL POST

Introducing ‘Volo TV’, a personal TV built into the back of the seat in front of you on the train. A nice idea? Well, no.

With more and more of us owning portable media players loaded with all the content we want, this screen-in-the-back-of-the-seat idea with it’s £3.50 per trip monetisation model misses the…ah, train.

Everything about it is unwanted and unwelcome. And it’s way too close to my face, leaving me feeling claustrophobic and trapped. Worse yet, it’s also permanently on. ‘Since this TV replaces the Safety Card’ says the touch-screen blurb ‘it is not possible to switch the screen off’. Unbelievable. So it sits there, running through its promotional videos and pumping out heat – and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it. Well, almost nothing.  The woman in front of me had hung her coat over her screen. Good idea. A quick scan up and down the packed carriage showed nobody watching their VoloTV.

Currently, there’s no advertising – but it IS on its way, and judging by the complete lack of paying punters on our journey today, you’ll be seeing it pretty damn soon. So that’s advertising pumping out of a screen you can’t switch off 8 inches from your face? No f*****g way, First Great Western!

Few things create such a universal and instantly negative reaction as Volo TV did today – and that fact alone marks it out as a stunningly bad move. In fact the invasion of my personal space was so unpleasant that I found myself wanting to break the screen.

Instead, my colleagues and I staged a peaceful protest, sticking king sized post-it notes over the screens and leaving First Great Western in no doubt whatsoever as to our feelings.

Hotel horror stories: more worrying marketing from Tripadvisor

May 11 | by Sam Deeks | marketing
No Comments

Nothing pulls in viewers like a bit of shock horror, right Tripadvisor?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; this isn’t a good marketing strategy.

Hey, what do I know?

All I know is that this approach to pulling people into the Tripadvisor site does nothing to build my trust in either Tripadvisor’s motives or its methods. Sadly, it’s following that time-honoured, downward trend of all things internet: the more lurid, tacky, salacious and shocking your content and methods, the more money you’ll make.

Pardon me for being…well, not surprised, I suppose is a way of putting it.

Tripadvisor’s slogan used to be ‘Get the truth and then go’. That’s since become ‘The world’s most trusted reviews’ – which is convenient, since it’s now only one small step to change it again to ‘The world’s tackiest reviews’.

Tripadvisor no doubt feels safe behind its US internet libel laws which (to this layman) seem to offer considerable protection to anyone publishing anyone else’s comments about anything. Add the penchant for anonymity in the world of reviews and you have a recipe for sleaze and manipulation.

Yuk.

User reviews into Adwords??

May 1 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, critical approach to online media, culture, feedback
1 Comment

What’s Google doing adding reviews to Adwords listings in search results?

For some time I’ve been thinking that the anonymous user review + the competitive environment of Google search = a disastrous formula for all concerned.  Why? Because anonymity pretty much guarantees that reviews end up being used to ‘game’ the market. This isn’t me being negative about human nature, this is just pragmatism.  If 97% of all email sent everyday is spam…well, you get what I’m saying.

Now, Google is going to put user reviews into the search results beneath paying advertiser’s ads. But which reviews? Apparently, those that come from a ‘closed’ system provided by a partner,  Bazaarvoice.com.  According to this report, review information will only be added from a review system if the organisation using it agrees.

(picture from Earthblog News)

So who’s going to want truly open and potentially critical reviews turning up in the search results next to their carefully crafted, paid-for Google ads?  Er, no-one. They’re going to want nice reviews that will make their ads look more attractive. Bye bye transparency.

All of which continues to make a mockery of the noble ideas about feedback and transparency that social media pundits like to talk about. The true value of feedback in business (as in life) is its role in driving learning, development and change but Google – like every other business dealing in ‘user generated reviews’ – is only interested in feedback as a commodity it can trade to businesses seeking competitive advantage.

So what’s Google doing adding reviews to paid ads in the search results? Just more of what it’s always been doing from the start: converting human knowledge into cash via the technology of the ‘keyword’.

Don’t be evil? Don’t make me laugh. I can’t help think that Google has been nothing but – and that we’ve colluded with it every step of the way ;-)

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