Archives for May 2009

Do a search for cydcor.  This is a company that employs a large face-to-face sales force so it naturally gets a high profile in the public because of contact with potential customers and employees alike so sure enough there are complaints.  But look closely.  They are from 2002 and 2004!

And yet, these old, unverifiable complaints from a site with no discernible editorial policy outranks:

A Cydcor Client Story at Reuters
Cydcor Opportunity Page at Monster
Cydcor Company Overview at Hoover’s
Cydcor’s LinkedIn Profile
Cydcor News at eMediaWire
More Cydcor News at PRWeb
Cydcor Investment Overview at BusinessWeek

How?  A variation of the Google Bomb!  But instead of the company website, it is the search result page itself that gets hijacked.  With just 25,000 results for Cydcor, it takes only a very few negative comments in these large complaint sites to rank right along side the company name for these navigational queries.

Welcome to the tyranny that is lawless democracy.

It was just a matter of time until the so-called "democratic nature of the web" developed precisely the same problems that caused our founding fathers to eliminate democracy as a viable form of government for these United States.  Specifically, the tyranny of majority.

What they knew, and we have forgotten, is that the majority never need protection, even from oppressive government.  It is the minority that law protects.

How does this relate to SEO you may ask?  The "wisdom of the crowds" gone terribly wrong.

Imagine a site where people can complain about companies anonymously in an environment with no editorial review.  Since complainers generally have lots of free time on their hands, such a site will rapidly grow to enormous size and naturally rank for most company names with little or no effort.

Welcome to ripoffreport.  Examples next.