Google announced at the SXSW conference this week that it will soon be targeting all “bad merchants” with an algorithm that will lower their search rankings.
That means if a retailer shows up in Google search rankings due to poor reviews or complaints, that content will no longer help that merchant stay at the top.
“We have a potential launch later this year, maybe a little bit sooner, looking at the quality of merchants and whether we can do a better job on that, because we don’t want low quality experience merchants to be ranking in the search results,” said Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam.
Google’s efforts to protect searchers from poor retail experiences reinforces the importance of online customer feedback. Now is the time to examine both your customer-service practices and your digital footprint.
