Google Slams Customer Bashing Web Retailer

By Lucy Mitchell
Dec 2 2010

Google, the Silicon Valley search engine giant, dealt a devastating blow to a top online retailer today when it pushed the companies search ranking to the lowest point.

DecorMyEyes.com, a retailer for glasses has been using a little known but once effective technique to bolster its position in the search rankings. The company started treating their customers badly and this created a push for the company as it started to see increased sales and better traffic.

The entire incident started with a single complaint which was logged on another website. The owner of the site, Vitaly Borker, realized that he was receiving traffic from the site that had posted the complaint. So in an effort to increase business he ordered that all employees treat the customers poorly to build more complaints.

This was a unique idea that seemed to work until Google got wind of the plan. The Times in New York ran a story on a woman who had made a purchase from the site and was threatened with a sexual assault and referred to by vulgar names. When the Times story broke Google sat up and took notice.

Now the company has designed a specific algorithm that targets sites that attempt to boost their search engine ranking with negative comments posted to other sites.

Experts have said that the reason why the system worked in the beginning was the fact that the more links to a site that there are in the world the higher the popularity of the site.