I just read an article by Mike Moran, the author of one of my favorite search engine marketing books, Search Engine Marketing, Inc. I had an opportunity to meet Mike after a speaking engagement a few years ago – his well organized, common sense approach to SEM has really shaped my thinking of the channel.

The article, titled “Economy Down and Google Up“, opened by pointing out Google’s recent revenue gains and moved on to a topic that is actually becoming very apparent in my own experiences lately. I’ve been working with a traditional broadcast media agency and can clearly see the shift in budgets to more performance-based interactive channels. I believe that it is a combination of multitudes of marketers finally “getting” interactive media and, as Mike’s article points out, the slowed economy which causes businesses to look for the most efficient means to reach their audience. I’m not one to complain.

When doing research for one of my clients, I’ve been noticing several recurring consumer complaint sites coming up on the first page of Google’s search results for branded terms and company names.

Just today, I was searching for “Boston Medical Group” in Google. (Just for the record I am not a prospective patient; not that there is anything wrong with it)

Mixed in with Boston Medical Group’s own website, the results are scattered with patient question on medical forums, local directory listings and some glaring consumer complaint sites.

I think that it is perfectly ethical for the owners of these consumer complaint sites to give people a voice against bad consumer experiences. I don’t even mind that they are actively optimizing their sites for the brand names in order to look more relevant to the search engines. What bothers me is the way these sites all seem to have a business model based around extortion. Every consumer complaint site that I ran across while searching for Boston Medical Group had mostly negative, apparently user generated content. (anonymously posted, of course) At the same time, the sites offer “Reputation Management” services for companies to purchase, which, from what I can gather from their vague description, will remove your listing from the site – and hence Google’s search results page. It seems to me that the people running these sites are simply online extortionists. (and there is something wrong with that.)

In my opinion, Google and the other major search engines should be investigating consumer complaint sites that are getting massive exposure through their algorithmic results for branded terms like “Boston Medical Group”, then asking for money to have the negative publicity removed.