The free WOT safe surfing add-on could have saved Clarabelle Rodriguez and hundreds of other disgruntled customers a lot of trouble. A fabulous New York Times piece published Sunday, A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web by David Segal, tells the story of a scammer peddling fake designer eyeglasses who noticed that negative reviews about his site boosted the site’s search engine ranking. Ms. Rodriguez fell victim after she entered a search term for her favorite eyeglass designer into Google’s search engine.
DecorMyEyes (see the WOT Reputation Scorecard) appeared at the top of the results, even after multitudes of complaints were submitted to various advocacy websites. What is so interesting about this story is what DecorMyEye’s owner, Vitaly Borker, accidentally discovered. Basically, the more people wrote posts about his website being a scam, the higher it appeared in search results, which lead to more people falling for the scam.
In response to complaints about his site Mr. Borker, using an alias, wrote the following, “Hello, My name is Stanley with DecorMyEyes.com,” the post began. “I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement.”
WOT is the safe surfing solution for search engines and consumers
Search engines: For search engines wanting to improve their users’ experience, WOT reputation ratings can be incorporated into the algorithms. WOT’s crowd-sourced data is accurate and updated in real-time. Our global community is agile and responsive, and the WOT system is built to be resistant to manipulation attempts.
For a safe search now, add the WOT Safe Search engine to your Firefox search engine drop down menu for safe and smart searches from WOT and Surf Canyon.
Consumers: For consumers who want to know which sites are safe to do with business with, the solution is simple. The WOT browser add-on would have warned Ms. Rodriguez about DecorMyEyes before she clicked. The WOT community has rated over 30 million websites for trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety. The WOT icon appears next to the search results, leaving no doubt about the site’s trustworthiness.
If a WOT user follows a link to a site that has a poor rating, then the WOT warning screen will appear.
Download the WOT add-on for your browser. It’s free!