How to Deal with a Ripoff Report Listing
Our VIP(erchill) column features real online reputation issues that people find themselves in and offers advice on how to deal with them. You could call it VIP treatment, and it’s free. For more posts on this column go to the VIP Category.
For this blog entry, we are looking at the widely discussed Ripoff Report and steps you can take to Deal with a Ripoff Report Listing, welcome to the first ever post in our VIP column, hope you enjoy!
For those who don’t know, Ripoff Report (who will not get a link) is a site that allows people to share their displeasure with a company or its services. That all sounds fair and well, but the company seem to be employing a lot of strange tactics which include keyword stuffing and requiring payment for a listing to be removed. There are thousands of people in a poor situation because Ripoff Report are ranking highly for a lot of keywords and are costing legitimate people and businesses a lot of time and money.
Build Your Profile
Whatever you are listed for (brand / product / service name) the first thing you want to do is try to build up a profile of that around the web. What this means is creating say a blog on wordpress related to what you are defending, a profile on MySpace and even a lens on Squidoo, anything that talks about your company in a positive light and on a site that has some authority to rank well in search engines.
This is not easy as Ripoff Report has a lot of domain authority and holds some pretty good rankings in Google. One of the best ways to at least push them down a notch or two is to create more tailored pages to your brand / product on your own actual website. If you have any basic SEO you should be ranking no.1 for them anyway, created a few relevant and targeted pages on your domain and link through to them from the homepage.
File a Rebuttal
They are ‘nice’ enough to give you the option to respond to negative criticism on the site (and I have seen examples of this), whether they let anything show or how long this takes I’m unsure. It’s definitely worth a try though as people are probably going to stumble on that listing whether you like it or not.
In their words: “On the contrary, you can write a rebuttal explaining your position. Rebuttals are 100% free, and we strongly encourage you to use this resource since they can be extremely effective. “
Help Get them Out of Google
The reason the listings on the site are such an issue of course is because they are ranking highly for a lot of sensitive searches. As Rand Fishkin pointed out in the link at the top, they are breaking a lot of Google guidelines (including cloaking) and should be removed from the index or at least have less authority.
If this sounds like something you are willing to try, the boys over at distilled are heading this motion.
In Summary
No matter how hard SEO’s try, these listings probably aren’t getting out of the index anytime soon. The best step now would be to file a rebuttal so that it’s shown on the site and then start trying to get other pages on your site and pages from other sites to begin ranking highly for your precious keywords.
Oh, and if the listing is negative and true. Clean up your act first.
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I agree that a rebuttal is usually warranted and a good way to go with Rep Management, but one thing we try to teach our clients is write the response without mentioning your company name or personal name as it will help the piece rank higher. Obviously it may need to be said once to state who the Rebuttal is from but especially in cases of Rip Off Report (and their ridiculous amount of trust in Google) rebuttals can be the quickest way to make sure that post ranks even higher for your term.
Nice post Glen.
Good point Chris, and thanks for stopping by
Thanks for the mention again about our post on ROR. The thing that absolutely amazes me is that no one from Google has stepped up and made things right. If our post didn’t get anyones attention in Google, then nothing will. In my opinion - their silence is making them look very guilty in allowing ROR to spam their index. I really hope the money is good, because allowing this is (dare I say it) allowing evil to happen.
Someone needs to unleash the hax0r power on ‘em.
I am the victim of a bogus report on ROR. I have written a rebuttal several times. They have never been published. I have written ROR to ask why and to date I have received no response. What these people are doing just is not right. Truth means nothing to the folks at ROR.
I am the victim of a bogus report on ROR. I have written rebuttals several times and they have never been published. I have written to the editor at ROR to ask him why they won’t publish my rebuttal. To date I have received no response. The truth seems to not matter at all to these guys. What they are doing just isn’t right.
Thanks for confirming whether they actually do anything about these, sorry to hear about your situation as well.
You can email me the info if you want glen AT ViperChill.com and I’ll take a look.
Thanks for the help, Glenn. I will be in touch.
This was an interesting post for me to read as I have used RipOffReport quite a few times to investigate companies that were a bit questionable, whether it was their tactics, their offers, or something else. In fact, I went to a seminar once where a company used very high pressure tactics to get folks to shell out several thousand dollars for webhosting, websites - the whole nine yards. Many people who didn’t know better were sucked in. When I came home, I looked the company up on ROR and saw they were known for doing the same thing in many different areas of the U.S., and had even changed the name of the company a few times.
I have also seen rebuttals on their website, although the people filing rebuttals do seem to be met with a good deal of skepticism from the readers. If ROR is not publishing rebuttals, or requesting payment for a listing to be removed, then that is plainly wrong. Makes it difficult to know who to trust, although I always do a lot of research (ROR is just one site that I check) to see what reviews there are for programs, services and so on. Sorry to hear about your problems, Aaron.
- Megan
Thanks, Megan. At this point I am at a loss. I guess I will create a several blogs and such in order to try and push this ROR site down. What bothers me most is how there was no attempt to even check for factual accuracy in the report about me. The things this guy says that I did………they just aren’t true. And the fact that they aren’t letting me present my side, why would you even do that to someone. I
I’m all for consumer advocacy. I read Consumer Report religiously and always do research before purchasing something. But this website, it isn’t consumerism. It’s gossip.
Hey this site comes up third when you Google my name! Awesome! Since ROR won’t post my reply then I will post it here if that’s ok with everyone.
Here goes:
“I have been trying to post a rebuttal to this posting for a VERY, VERY long time and for some reason my response to this issue has never made it on to this site.
I called a furniture store to try to find a particular item and Doug just happened to be the guy who answered the phone. He was very helpful and seemed a bit overqualified for what he was doing for a living. I just asked him if he liked his job and he said he was definitely open to doing something else. I used a company-approved script to invite him to our office. The script is very clear about how our open interview process works so I’m not sure why Doug was surprised when he got down there.
Doug left the presentation before I had a chance to speak with him. I like to call anyone who takes time out to come to a presentation and thank them for their time. I was absolutely not at all rude or abusive to Doug in any way and I certainly did not hang up on him. He said he didn’t think our opportunity was a good fit for him because he’s “not a salesman”. I told him that he was quite the salesman when I had spoke with him at the furniture store…and Doug went on a tirade. I never got to say another word.
Apparently he had been in computers and was laid-off (a common tale in Denver at the time) and that’s how he ended up at the furniture store. He got very angry talking about the whole thing and he hung up on me. I understand that being laid-off can be a traumatic thing; I’ve gone through it myself. What I don’t understand is why Doug decided to take out his frustration on me by posting this “report”. Just about everything he says about me is untrue. I can’t help but wonder why his version of what happened is so different than what actually happened.
I have witnessed so many people join Primerica and change their lives. I honestly offered a viable opportunity to Doug when he was in need of one. I never misled him in any way. If it wasn’t right for him, that’s fine, but how is that in any way a “rip-off”? “
I am a victim of Rip Off. He has created an employee I never had and all of a sudden just the other day there is this other scathing article about me and my company, from “friendly”.
I do have a couple of complaints which are real, but they come from 2006 and were handled in court fairly.
but other complaints are bogus
I have filed rubuttals and they are not there to be found,.
I am not sure what I can do.
He is at the top of the search engines and I do not understand Google.
It seems we need to band together in a group - in a united force somehow
What do you think?
Well Aaron
I can only say I have had the same problems. I have posted rebuttals on Rip off only to find they are not there!
I too had one person who was discontented. Now this person writes reports about something that happened 2 years ago. It sounds like it happened yesterday.
Then ROR has created a fake employee, that this person (Pam) responds to.
I need to do something about this. I am not sure what. Maybe we can form some kind of united group?
I will write here again with an email address that anyone can write to.
Ruth
I have tried to post a rebuttal for several days now…. it doesn’t show up.
I signed up to be contacted by their Consumer Advocacy Program…. and they haven’t contact me.
The real ripoff is ripoff reports itself.
[…] How to Deal with a Ripoff Report Listing […]
My nightmare started in 2006 when RipOff Report allowed 2 totally bogus claims come in which were created in my name and signed by my husbands name (all searchable and indexable). My husband shares his name with his father, therefore the RipOff Report shows up for his father too. I have spent over $3-5K in websites, and I cannot tell you how many hours in SEO development to clear his name. I moved it down for my name, but only onto page 2 on Google. The RipOff Report for his name still shows up no top PAGE 1. Yahoo, AltaVista, Ask and other search engines do not index RipOff Report. Only Google. I wrote to Google (what a waste of time that was), and explained that the claims on the internet were not true IN ANY WAY and they need to be removed (7 months ago). I explained that this was our family name being tarnished. After I realized that Google could care less, I started blogging. Now I am on every blog page, link rolling page, picture sharing page, etc. Our family name is posted all over the internet. But guess who is still on top? What else can I do? I really do not want our name here as it will eventually be indexed.
How can this be legal? Why can’t this be stopped? We need to change the laws in this information world. It is like graffiti on the web. It is gossip and should not be taken seriously. Where is our FTC? Our Attorney Generals? Where is our Government. Are they all profiting off this SCAM?
HELP ME PUSH DOWN RIPOFF REPORT!
Signed
I HATE RipOff Report
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Wonderful post. I have been doing this for a few weeks to repair my reputation that a stalker attempted to ruin, and it is working for me. It does take a lot of determination and can be time consuming, but so far, evidence points to the possibility of this “counter-attack blogging” generating even more business for companies. It can, if handled properly, backfire on the perpetrators, as long as companies are diligent in their blogging efforts.
[…] removal or modification of the content. Some will co-operate, others won’t. Some will ask for money. You may think wiping out the content is the preferred approach, but remember that the community is […]