In early March I introduced to my readers a new SEM comparison review site sponsored by Search Marketing Standard magazine. Today, Kalena Jordan offers her impressions of the site and she says it spells nothing but trouble. Is she right?
I’ve got to say, she does bring out some good points:
The problem with the concept of rating SEM firms is that there are no published search industry standards that SEM agencies are required to meet and no formal accreditation body imposing such standards.
and
Giving consumers the power to anonymously rate SEM firms opens up another can of worms: how to keep the system free of corruption by SEM firms and disgruntled consumers alike?
Both of those are good points, but the second one is even better. Regarding consistent standards, I’m not sure I’d want an agency to regulate SEM. Consumers might feel differently, but I think giving any one agency the power to be the regulator over the entire industry would lead to already established companies gaining an unfair advantage over newcomers. That’s way it has worked in the off line world for a long time and it typically leads to higher prices and less freedom to negotiate prices and services between consumers and service providers.
Regarding the anonymous rating system SEMCompare has decided to use, I’d say Kalena makes a good point and I agree with it at heart. The problem with anonymous reviews is you don’t know who the reviewer is. The company has no way of responding to a negative review that is made anonymously, which isn’t really fair. Though most of the reviews I’ve seen so far have been positive and the negative reviews that Kalena provides on her blog are not necessarily problems, either for the companies or for SEMCompare, anonymous reviews could lead to problems. There is the danger of a customer with an axe to grind posting a negative review that could lead to a loss of revenue for a reputable company. So what should be done?
Amazon.com allows users to post reviews. They can be anonymous, but the reviews are rated individually and not by aggregating user reviews into a single rating system. Every review can be taken on its own merit. While this is not always seen favorably by industry insiders, it can be a great help to consumers. I personally like the idea of users having to sign up for an account and posting reviews under their user name. That way, no review is really anonymous, even if a user uses a fictitious name, which would still be possible. Anyone trying to game the system by unfairly reviewing a competitor negatively could be banned.
I don’t fault SEMCompare for attempting the review nature of its site, but it is possible to improve it. What do you think?
Hi Nick – nice to see you chiming in here and thanks for the link. It’s a hairy issue and is kind of related to the Sphinn discussions going on right now re standards: http://sphinn.com/story/37119 and http://sphinn.com/story/37287
I’m curious why you don’t think the negative reviews are problems? If someone wrote any of those about my company I’d have major problems, I think your idea of reviewer ratings is bood but wouldn’t work in this case as how many companies has a reviewer used. With Amanzon a person can read and review hundreds of books.
Kalena, thanks for the links. You can see the response at SEOJ.
David, negative reviews can be a problem, but the ones that I saw and that Kalena pointed out weren’t not really that bad. Every company, after being in business awhile, will get a few negative reviews. No one can help everyone. The problem is that anonymous reviews aren’t really helpful because I can’t test the credibility of the reviewer. There should be transparency both ways, not just one way.
I guess they’ve agreed to eliminate anyonymous reviews but not for those that already wrote one.