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How To Cope With Incorrect Information On A Community Site?

         

HuskyPup

1:48 pm on May 14, 2012 (gmt 0)



The last few months I have watched a great design ideas site rapidly climb through the SERPs. They're getting thousands of links and image posts every day and, in general, everything is of a very high quality. It is a great site, I would love to build one like this but I don't have this kind of money, USD 14+ million so far in venture capital.

The issue I have is of both Joe Public and supposed "trade experts" posting incorrect information about my trade's widgets. Small spelling mistakes always happen (although extremely annoying) however some widgets are not only being labelled incorrectly but also the information about them.

I only supply my widget to the trade in bulk however this malinformation is starting to have an effect in that the trade is now asking me for these incorrectly named widgets and they can get quite a surprise when I tell them the truth about the product's cost and availability.

I have no doubt that within a few months this specific site is going to rank #1 for all of my widgets, it has a huge editorial staff and lots of venture funding however it frustrates me that so much incorrect information is regularly being posted.

Do I just have to bite my tongue and avoid going there?

netmeg

5:49 pm on May 14, 2012 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



(Not sure this is a Google issue, but...)

If it were me, I'd start up a FAQ page to correct the bad information (without mentioning the other site by name; don't burn bridges before you have to)

If you have a site search, I'd seed searches for the incorrect information and have them go to the correct information on your site; if you have an easy way to implement, add a note to the user why they arrived at that page.

Possibly could you establish a relationship with this site, offer one correction and see how they react, and then work something out? Maybe guest articles/posts with links back to your site? I dunno. Hard to tell what the opportunities are without seeing it.

HuskyPup

6:11 pm on May 14, 2012 (gmt 0)



Not sure this is a Google issue, but...


At the moment it is only a Google issue, they seem to really like the pages, they are in general very good quality articles and photos, the "other" search engines are not ranking them highly yet, i.e. generally on Bing at the bottom of page 2 v close to the top on G.

Possibly could you establish a relationship with this site


I've also wondered that however I really do not have the time but also being bloody minded, why should I make them an authority site for "free"?

This isn't a Wikipedia situation, they are a California-based start-up with plenty of venture capital. I've been bitten harshly by Google recently for no reason whatsoever except see scrapers go above me, I'm not doing anything for free any more.