Yesterday I wrote about taking on the evil corporate giant Google and how they have become the controller of truth over my company. In all honesty Google is the controller of truth for a lot of our lives. When we want to know the answer to something do we drive down to the library, thumb through the card catalog, grab several reference books on the matter, pay $0.10 a copy, and conduct our own research on the matter? No, we Google it.
I don’t know the exact stats (I should probably Google it) but something like 90% of people never make it past the first organic Google result. That’s why Google sells so many ads and different types of ads, and people like me buy them. Being above the fold is of the utmost importance and nearly impossible to achieve as a small business with a limited budget.
Google tells businesses that one of the best ways to improve ranking in both search and maps is to get reviews. They then give you a link you can send to your customers to get reviews. I started doing this in March and it led to the company going from 40 reviews to a high of 62, but right after we hit 60 reviews started disappearing. Like Google wanted to make it extra challenging to crest that hill.
So like Sisyphus I grabbed my boulder and started pushing it back up that hill. One step after another I followed Googles protocols and low and behold they restored some of the missing reviews. As of right now we are sitting at 59 reviews with six missing and it is frustrating me beyond rationality, because yesterday we also got several leads. None of them turned into bookings but our new capture system gives us a way to help with that.
This is the most the business has been contacted in awhile. Even if the reviews aren’t showing the relationships they stand on are stronger because the sentiment exists, and in the mind of the person that wrote the review they wrote it in ink.
Google lays out their policy for reviews in plain English and then doesn’t follow it. I have the Gmail records of the removed reviews and nowhere in them do they violate any Google policy. Meanwhile I have four negative reviews from people that admit in the reviews they were never clients. I understand why Google might want to take a more discerning look at negative reviews, but still this is a clear and explicit policy violation of their stated policy while the removed positive reviews violate nothing.
Lots of people love to misunderstand and talk about 1984 when it comes to modern politics, but the book was more about the surveillance state and the outsourcing of truth. It was simply at the time, and understandably in the wake of WWII and the outbreak of the Cold War, government was seen as the most likely culprit. Since that time power dynamics have shifted and the world has turned, and the real danger turned out not to be government at all.
I am not trying to tear the curtain on the temple of Google. All I am asking for is fairness and an even and equitably distribution of enforcement, and human review. Google is a company for bots by bots at this point, and the fact they largely control the source of truth should not rest easy with people. This war continues until my sling has pierced the heart of the giant and justice is restored.
David Huzzard Writes 