Yikes! Fighting Yelp Can Lead to Legal Trouble

These days, if an interested customer searches for your company, or for one of your products or services, they may first find your carefully crafted website along with links to a few of those press articles that your PR person worked hard to earn. But amongst the media channels you control, there are bound to be user reviews mixed in, right on the make-or-break first page of the search engine's results.

Many of the comments will be honest but some are bound to be outright lies. Nevertheless, the consumer might not be able to know the difference. And unfortunately, just one negative review can offset a slew of positive ones. A study by Forrester Research found that 47 percent of consumers will seek out an alternative after reading negative customer ratings or reviews about a specific product on a retailer's site. Only 26 percent will continue shopping for the product after coming across negative comments.*

So what happens if your brand is attacked by an anonymous internet troll? Should you fight back against the "brandjackers"?
According to the FindLaw blog, there are legal landmines awaiting if you choose to go after negative reviewers. One business owner's fight against a negative commenter on Yelp ended up in an offline, physical fight. Another company was sued for false advertising after flooding the web with fake online reviews. And who could forget the time John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, got busted for trying to drive down the stock price of acquisition target Wild Oats by posting negative comments on a stock forum under a pseudonym?
The best way to fight negative comments is to listen to the feedback and improve the experience for your customers. Eventually, the truth will overwhelm the chatter.
*There is some evidence that mixing negative reviews with positive ones may actually help close the sale, but that's another story.