Is Someone Damaging your Reputation with PPC?
Recently in some personal testing of not only the effectiveness of PPC but the Influence of PPC. I have found the potentially harmful use of PPC advertising on someone else’s brand. First off was the distribution of factual and press worthy information about local Raleigh NC Clubs; Yancy’s restaurant and the Longbranch Saloon music club. According to the TBJ “two popular Raleigh destinations, have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.” So in the efforts of testing I created one PPC ad. See: 
A fully legitimate ad, one that is true, backed up by a legitamate print publicly distributed news papers website. However these two Raleigh NC clubs are still in operation and for all I know, doing everything they can to get out of bankruptcy. Although because an individual with the knowledge of how to create PPC ads can have a potentially significant influence on a company. Second is a local Raleigh NC restaurant I have frequented very often…until recently. Yes, a local restaurant that on one occasion had extremely poor customer service. Perhaps I took the lead of a great friend & SEO PRO that had an extremely delayed payment from a non-profit church in the area. I went to the web with my poor experiance. And created an Ad, See:
As we all know, for this day-in-age the individual has possibly never had the leverage and impact available that we have now. These situations are great examples of situations YOUR brand and business can be affected by the opinion of one individual with the knowledge of how to spread that opinion. The Point of this Post was not to further voice my opinions. However to communicate the need for Reputation Management of individual companies and the concern to Google for the need of policing the ads that are created. The Ads I create have run for weeks on end with no question. I have since paused the Bankruptcy ads. However no intention in pausing the poor customer service ad. My question to the readers is: Is this an “un-fair” and some way only an internet professional can to do. Or is this totally cool for any and everyone to do in reviews of local or national business’? I look forward to your input! Also, If I were running the internet publication of the press article the business’ in highlight would be perfect keyword targets to generate more hits and ad impressions for my publication…for only 5 cents or less this would be a more than justifiable cost to generate hundreds of viewers over time!
look good
26 Jun 2008 11:48 am
Noah-
Nice Blog Post. I believe it should be open to anyone to make reviews– even if that means creating negative pay per click campaigns. The reality of it is that people depend on reviews to make their justification to buy things or go places. Since the internet is an open source- I don’t see why it is “un-fair” to advertise your own opinions. Maybe both local and national companies will eventually take their online reputation as seriously as their “brick and mortar” reputation.
Thanks,
Taylor
http://www.TaylorBarr.wordpress.com
26 Jun 2008 12:06 pm
Noah-
Great post. This sounds like a case of personal opinion being potentially more powerful than pubic opinion. Or, in other words, the law of unintended consequences for PPC.
PPC ads are a visibility tool. Use them for good ($), or use them for evil (reputation rot), but always use them for gain.
I’m heading to the trademark office to copyright the terms “reputation rot.” Keep up the great posts.
Jason