It's All Geek To Me - February 1st 2006

Engines Speak, even if you are Silent While visiting Thailand, I found out I could hardly eat – much of the food takes “spicy” to a whole new level that this geek couldn't handle. In the course of the week or so we spent there we did find tasty food, though, and I fell in love with basil fried rice. (good pic - click here) Last year a new restaurant opened just up the road from our offices, the Royal Thai Cuisine. They have amazing Mango Curry and really good soups, but by now you might be wondering what the heck this has to do with search engines - - - just stick with me for a bit here.

Right after the restaurant opened, Amy and I decided to be lazy one night and get takeout. Went for the phone book – no listing there, so of course we Googled it - “Royal Thai Cuisine Eastham Cape Cod” - and the number one result was from someone we knew well, Michael McGrath.

Michael maintains a number of cool blogs - Cape Dining Out is focused on Restaurant Reviews - a good resource for eating locally. He had done a review of this new restaurant and the link provided just the information we were looking for – the phone number. In addition, his review was positive but it is pretty interesting to note that a relatively new blog had the number one result for a restaurant – it gave a good review but we probably would have paused before ordering if it hadn’t.

Recently I searched for Thai food again and while Cape Dining Out still has the number one result there are now oodles of others as well. All the local portals have some basic info, there are some other reviews, and a few blogs mentioned specific soups and the like – all in all pretty positive feedback for this little Thai joint and now there is a decently sized pile of it.

This is quite different than the experience a client of ours had with Trip Advisor in 2002 – a review site who's motto is “get the truth, then go”. Our client got nailed with a few awful reviews of the hotel and one creative reviewer even suggested they rename the restaurant to the “Barf & Spittle”. Funny now, but seriously bad news then as the hotel had just opened.

The executives did not look too kindly on this situation – and like the smart people they are, they inquired about legal solutions, ways to remove data, and what the heck they could do about the problem. Bottom line - - - this was hurting their business and it was downright embarrassing.

KISS gave them some good answers – the manager posted a response to the bad reviews, we continued our other search engine efforts and soon this “awful and damaging situation” became something pretty minor. There was no way to get the pee out of the pool, but we could make it look a lot less yellow.

The lesson here is an important one – the engines keep talking, even if you choose to be silent. The only way to deal with this is to make sure you are aware of what is happening and stay in the game.

Recently I've been talking with folks about search engine marketing and every once in a while I hear someone say that engines are “of no concern” or “not where our customers are,” and I chuckle to myself. If that had been the attitude of our client in 2002 the task before us when the bad reviews surfaced would have been much bigger and nearly impossible. With a written search engine strategy already in place and simple work already rolling, well, it wasn't that difficult to change direction a little bit to deal with the problem.

The simple fact is your customers are going to type your name into search engines, even if all they want is the phone number. There will be a listing of some variety – and your faithful long time customer becomes vulnerable to whatever those results say about you. Maybe it is a crazy person ranting, but that doesn't mean they won't see it.

In the future it is only reasonable to expect more and more people will use the web as a resource for basic info – it is already the first stop for research on purchases.

At KISS we keep an eyeball on what Google and the like has to say about us – this morning I Googled our name and found these results, directing people to our site as the first couple of results, some address information, mention of us winning the Governors Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, our domain name selling site, kissnames.com, our BBB listing, some mixed in references to a makeup clad rock band, The Provincetown VSB's motion to accept our estimate for web work, the Webby Award we won last year for work on Whalewatch.com, some listings of seminars we did in the past, and some mentions of this newsletter in a few flattering inbound links.

All in all, this was a pretty nice pile of engine data . . . no major problems, and some new things that made me smile.

One of my favorite firms that offers a product to help with these issues is GoogleAlert – they have a bunch of tag lines, but the one I like best is: “The Web is talking about you. Do you know what it's saying?”. They charge $20 a month to keep track of things – and through them I have learned that there is a very successful college wrestler named Ross Lasley. I’m pleased to see it every time he wins a match.

The important thing to remember- no matter what plan is in place with your web professional, what service you may use, or how your search engine work is going – a written search engine strategy is necessary and critical for all entrepreneurs – if you ignore the engines, they'll speak for you.