If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my feed or subscribe to me on Twitter, which is updated on a more frequent - and more meaningless - basis.
I was wandering around the Blogosphere when I got home from New York SEO Class and came across a post at rmay’s blog about MerchantCircle. He was essentially complaining about the lack of usability and useful layout and/or information on the MerchantCircle.com website. But, what shocked me was what happened as a result…
A representative for Merchant Circle commented on his post stating:
“Where most of our nearly 110,000 business owners find value and where we’ve positioned ourselves is optimizing our business listings to come up higher in search engines like Google and Yahoo. We haven’t really targeted to the consumer community to come to us as a search portal for businesses.”
Wait… what? You run a website that has a goal of ranking for business names and general business queries in the search engines, but do not design your page or aim the content at consumers? How does that even make sense? So, basically, Merchant Circle is doing their best to rank in the search engines with the sole goal being to charge businesses to control their listing, but providing no end experience or value to the user?
I was amazed by this. Not that they want advertisers – come on, we all want to monetize our sites, but you’re supposed to provide value to the end user, also known as the consumer in the process. So, I did a little more reading in my fascination at their admission. What I found left me feeling like I had stumbled upon the mafia of business listings on the web.
A recent blog post of theirs (this is the first time in history I have ever been disgusted with someone enough to use the nofollow tag, which pisses me off in and of itself) states:
“Other sites give complete control to customers and their reviews. We give complete control to you, the business owner. Don’t like a review? Delete it.”
What? So, you position your site to look like it is offering reviews for consumers of local businesses, but then allow business owners to delete any review they don’t like? How the hell does that provide any valuable information to the consumer? So, I click on the review page (again, nofollow) for a business local to me. I search for the warning (in plain sight) that any review I may take 20 minutes of my time to write could be deleted at any point in time, because the sole point of this site is to strong arm public perception of local businesses. Of course, I didn’t find it.
Then I go back to the business listings pages and end up on the listing page for my local Boston Cooker (yup, nofollow). Well, I spy the listings for nearby restaurants using the Yahoo Local logos. Now, let’s forget for a second that they display the Yahoo logo for nearby restaurants but there is no link to Yahoo Local in that area. One would assume they are advertising the star ratings as coming from Yahoo local. Village Pizza has a five star rating according to Merchant Circle from Yahoo (screenshot). But, when I look up Village Pizza at Yahoo Local, you see that it actually has a four star rating (screenshot). So, we’ve moved from offering biased opinions (without being labeled as such) to what looks like false advertising utilizing the branding and name of Yahoo Local. Nice.
Back to the blog post… so, MerchantCircle.com states:
“…we also want to make you aware that customers are writing reviews about your business on the web. We want to show them to you and many times those reviews aren’t flattering. Don’t take it personal with us. We just want to let you know so that you can manage your online reputation”
So, my first thought when I saw that statement was some kind of mafia movie flash in my head… “Hey, people are saying bad things about you, and we’re letting them. And we’re making sure they get publicity. If you want protection, it will cost you a fee each month”.
Seriously. So, I do a search for “Village Pizza, Spring Hill, FL” on Google and Yahoo. Sure enough, Merchant Circle shows up top five in each. Funny thing though was the title tag for the Yahoo listing for MerchantCircle.com: “Food and Dining Coupons and more in Spring Hill, FL”. So, I go to the page. Village pizza is on the list of business on the top left, but shoved midway through the list (and also with no rating on this one).
Additionally, at first glance, the only place I see the word coupons jump out at me is in the Adsense block to the right. However, if I’m determined, I finally see a light gray box at the top with a coupons link (rmay mentioned the non-visible without staring links too) and when clicking on it, I am presented with coupons for legal services and carpet cleaning. Wow! Exactly what I was looking for when I typed in my search query at Yahoo.
While I was at the top of the page, I saw a blog link that appeared, from the url string, to be a blog aimed at my local town. I click it and find a blog, written by what appears to be local business owners with absolutely no editorial quality control from Merchant Circle. Several of the posts look like what most of us get when we are hit my blog spam (screenshot). Yes, this section was beyond helpful. The only legitimate information on the page appears to be a feed being brought in via topix.net, which Merchant Circle has chosen to nofollow (I have no idea why that amuses me so at this point).
Another blog post (again, nofollow) states:
“…such great small businesses to go to. And without MerchantCircle, they wouldn’t have had the chance to be found on the web. You see, MerchantCircle is their primary web presence.”
Again, the mafia movie pops into my head. Small business owners *do* have multiple chances to be found on the web. They can create their own websites and promote their small business website on the local level and do their own local small business online marketing.
They can utilize consumer portals that are *true* consumer portals like Yahoo Local, Google Local which target the masses or small niche portals like Restaurantica that target a specific industry (in this case, restaurant reviews).
And if a small business is having a problem with achieving a bad reputation on the web? First and foremost, they can improve their own business to better satisfy customers. But, if the occasional angered consumer comes along? They can utilize their own reputation management or hire a reputation management professional whore to help them promote the positive aspects of their business.
I’m not saying reputation management is a bad thing. I’m saying that reputation management, guised as a consumer portal that lists reviews without clearly stating that any reviews can be deleted at a business owner’s request, which allows business owners to pay to be able to control that reputation in their favor after they’ve obtained ranks on their business names utilizing nothing more than a mash up site with no value that uses what I see as scare tactics to gain advertisers is shitty.
Additionally, as a consumer, I’d like to officially tell MerchantCircle to kiss my ass, because I don’t appreciate being directed to a site that, of their own admission, is not built for consumers and doesn’t give me what I want or expect and doesn’t state what I feel is their complete bias.
And apologies Merchant Circle - I’m afraid there is no advertising sign up form that can silence *this* opinion.
Subscribe to the Sugarrae feed | Follow Sugarrae on Twitter
Related Posts
Sugarrae runs on the Thesis WordPress Theme
If you’re someone who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality that you wouldn’t be able to obtain otherwise with a simple control panel instead of having to alter code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.
For those "in between", like myself, I’ve created "dummy" guides for Thesis hooks that allow us to make more professional customizations than we ever deemed possible. The theme is not only highly customizable, but it has allowed me to run Sugarrae more professionally, with a much more targeted focus on monetization than it ever has been able to achieve before. You can find out more about Thesis below:
{ 10 trackbacks }
{ 83 comments… read them below or add one }
← Previous Comments
WHY would any business owner not like MC! hmmmm lets see: Its Free and The BEST SEO tool available. Its up to the consumers to make up their own mind through due dilegence. All we can expect MC to do is help the consumer find us. THANK YOU MC, chris
Well, I just joined MerchantCircle not even a week ago…one of my contacts notified me of them. I’m not using any paid plan with them, wanted to try out the basic first. But I have connected with alot of businesses relevant to mine and it’s been positive so far.
As for the ratings, I don’t mess with them at all. I recieved high and low…I know someone sabotaged my ratings because my business is relatively new. Doesn’t bother me, at the end of the day it’s up to the consumer. I WILL NOT adjust any ratings because that’s not how I operate…what I get is what I get, even though I know other businesses or people give low ratings on purpose.
I think MC is a great way for small business owners to get the word out about their business. The large fries make enough anyway, and they sabotage more than anyone on the net…but I don’t hear people complaining about them at all.
Thank you. I had never heard of these guys until my business got a phone call (recorded) saying that someone was Googling us and they wanted our phone # for who knows what reason. Luckily, I found your rant using Dogpile and am glad I did. Now I know better than to call them back. Just think, over a year later, and you’re still doing good with that one act. Thanks again.
I just got the same call to check my buiness reputation. Having never heard of this company I searched as a consumer. I honestly can’t understand how a consumer would’ve found then trusted this to begin with. I did not pursue this further. Thanks for the input.
I also own a small biz and got a call that we were being “ranked” by a customer and that I had better go online to subscribe and check this “ranking” for accuracy. I also had never heard of them and found this blog in my research about them. Thanks for the info and heads up. As a small biz owner I’ve got my hands full truing to run a good biz with happy customers and happy employees. Thanks again for having our backs on this one.
the comp. i work for as recep just received a call from mc.com to verify our info on their website for someone who had googled us. i had never heard anything about this and not quite trusting it, i searched for the site and found this one. thanks for the heads up and i agree that if they can call us to let us know then they could give our # to whoever was looking for it. also my employer never signed up for this anyway which gives me another reason to believe that they are not 100% legitimate in their business practices.
I received an automated call this morning saying that someone had a done a Google search and was requesting a verification that my business legitimate. The only thing I had to do was go the website and enter my phone to be declared legitimate. Well I did that, and with a half hour the spam from other businesses started hitting my mailbox. None of it was of any interest to me. I assume those folks paid some kind of fee to access my email address.
Merchant Circle usese deceptive business practices and should be avoided.
Pretty funny stuff. I have been receiving calls from Merchant Circle for probably a year now. I always hang up on them before they can get into their poorly written call script. Even more interesting however, is that I just changed my hosting service recently and wanted to test my search results. Low and behold, I found a listing for my company name with a very old and outdated company cell phone number, in my same line of business, but in a small town 45 minutes away from me, where we have NEVER had an office. I sent in a post to Merchant Circle asking that they delete the listing two months ago…I have not heard back as of yet.
More sleezy work from Merchant Circle. I’m a small business owner of a psychotherapy private practice. About a month ago I got a voicemail from Merchant circle, “Hello, this is Merchant Circle calling. An potential customer has used to verify that you are actually a business. To verify that you are a valid business, call us back at 1-800 blah blah blah.”
I knew it was a scam and ignored it. Then, they called me again yesterday, and leaving a message. “Hello this is Merchant Circle again, and we never received a call back from you to verify that you are a business to this potential customer! Please call us back as soon as you can!”
This is total trash. At the moment, my only web presence is through Psychology Today, which verifies the license of the listers. Plus, I went to Merchant Circle myself to find my business (which I did) and click on a button to “verify” it. Nope. No such thing. Quel suprise. Scum bags!
just hang up whenever they call you.
I had no idea that such things were happening. Goes to show that if you don’t keep up with what is happening on the internet you can sure get behind. Glad I found your site. I’ve bookmarked it so I can keep up with what is going on. Thanks for letting us know about it. Keep up the good work.
Being an Electrical Contractor in Florida,I’ve seen that most Biz’s that list contractors are loose with thier qualifications.We have Gulf Coast Builders Exchange here and they have a member that has filed bankrupcy twice to elude paying subs,I went and told J and he was in complete denial,but he got his $500 membership fee.If the system worked,only the good guys would survive,in Florida we have SunBiz.org,counties have permit status reports to backcheck,and the good ole DBPR.Because of this logic,we are all paying right now.
I suppose I can understand some of your point(s), as a consumer. However, from MC’s point of view, why would they want their site to be too consumber-based?
a. If they did, no one would click on a Google AdSense Ad to find what they’re REALLY looking for (after possibly not finding it on MC)
b. It is not cool to consider MC an unfair reputation-saving company. That control is left up to the business owners.
c. It is also unfair to say that businesses on MC are illegitimate, shady, or negative in any other way. Even if a business has ONLY good feedback or comments, we can’t assume all the bad ones were weeded out. Maybe the good ones are all that have been posted. A business has to make me pretty angry to post negative feedback on their web site (or someone else’s).
I opened an MC account for a bit of exposure for my NEW web site; backlinks are important. Our niche market would never be found a good MC company, but I thought I would give it a try; and in turn, possibly meet other local business owners.
Everyone has an agenda if you dig deeply enough…
Could some of you give opinions about the type of marketing where a merchant might not at all use the Internet, except a private site, and only use business cards and face to face contact to get new clients. Being this world is so full of selfish and dishonest people. I’m thinking of doing business more discreetly as I’ve described above, since I have a type of business where reputation and honesty is important. I’m thinking of the kind of network that is much more discreet, more private although not cliquish, and more vigilant.
What would anyone in the blog think about this? Is it necessary to go out an be so bold, not giving a whip about who you converse with and try to market. I’ve had some bad things happen from doing business with people on craigslist for example. I had clients thinking I was illegal and even trying to get me to conduct myself against the law. I wondered if I came across that way. I did not see how I could establish a firm network and client foundation off the Internet anymore as I would get so many selfish, dishonest, angry, and mean people. Is this how this Merchant Circle is? Is there anyone whose had positive experiences with it more than negative?
The merchant circle isn’t working. With so many complaints on so many websites about merchant circle, it’s a wonder they’re gone if this is why their website doesn’t come up anymore. One other person just reported how they were getting fake negative ratings and reviews. Fake why? Customer and merchants were not really leaving negative reveiws. :) God, I just signed up with Merchant Circle. Forget it, I’ll delete my listing a second time. I’m scared again:)
Here’s what is says when I try to get on the merchant circle website:
The website cannot display the page
HTTP 500
Most likely causes:
•The website is under maintenance.
•The website has a programming error.
What you can try:
Refresh the page.
Go back to the previous page.
More information
YEah, maybe this Internet review thing wouldn’t be good anywhere. I just tried to give myself a 5 star rating on CitySearch and it worked. A merchant can pretend they are a customer and up their own ratings just as a competitor can say negative things just to boot another merchant down. With the economy already slumping, maybe this review and rating thing isn’t so good, as you can be a viable, honest, great business and get mobbed by your competitors with fake and negative reviews. On the other hand, you can make your 5 star ratings and put your own good reviews up on yourself, and this is dishonest too. So, who can trust the validity of anyone’s reviews online anymore. I think I”m taking down all my listing and going about networking the old fashioned way — by being selective who I do business with, using business cards, maybe a private website, and face to face marketing. I can afford to have my business flounder by ill people online. Nobody can.
I mean I CAN’t afford to have my business flounder because of ill people online, competitors, or defective scripts. Why market the online community when most of what it has to say is negative or erroneous.
one has to market and run their business like it’s underground these days in order to prevent so much negative, malicious, greedy, competitive, and dishonest clients, competitors, and networks from destroying them. Being honest, skilled, and true doesn’t pay off either. Then, there’s the person who competes with you, because they know clients will like the honest and skilled one better. So, either way, if you suck, you won’t get clients, if you are excellent, you may get some clients, but then a snake comes along. I’m going to be more careful.
Morgantwo, you may very well be doing your business a disservice by not being online, and open to public view. Understandably, you want to protect your reputation. We all do.
The issue is not just with MC. There have always been ways for competitors to play dirty and tarnish your image; as there has always been ways for companies to ‘toot their own horns’ fraudulently.
The advent of the Internet has just allowed such things to happen much more publicly; quickly; and most of all, widely. Don’t shy away from online promotion all together.
You have a valid point about choosing better people to do business with, but with a larger pool of people, you will have MORE choices. This is what the Internet is great for - connecting us with POTENTIAL clients. You can still be discriminating about your choices, but don’t fall behind your competition, who may market themselves online, and steal your potential clientèle. What then?
I am a firm believer in ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’, but not entirely in this case. Entrepreneurship is about taking chances. You can do this, and still take precautionary measures to ensure your reputation is up to snuff.
No matter if you are online or not, the rest of the world is. If someone wants to write something bad about you, they will find an arena like ripoffreport.com or angieslist.com. The point is, you don’t have to be online to have your name tarnished online. Additionally, if you have a web site, you will be better able to refute any fraudulent claims, and redeem yourself. Make it difficult for people to believe any bad claims against you by putting your best foot forward online. Keep it positive.
Having a web site is a major factor for many people in determining whether a company is worth their salt. If your web site conveys your true reputation, and has REAL positive reviews from REAL clients, you will be just fine.
Good luck!
I just wanted to say that I think Merchant Circle is great! And it is definitely a way to network with other business owners. After all, they buy services as well, right? Also, when someone accepts my invitation, I look at their website and it makes me aware of what they have to offer! I had one guy who accepted my invitation stop by to give me a bid to clean our windows, and then bought food at our restaurant. Business has picked up as we are able to send out newsletters and coupons free to as many people or businesses that partnered with our business. I did notice it isn’t tailored to consumers specifically, but business owners are consumers too and I look to see who offers in what in my circle whenever a need arises. I haven’t spent a dime with them, and unless you are completely unfamiliar with computers, you don’t need to purchase their services. I do agree with Rae however that perhaps “Testimonials” would be a better phrase than “Reviews” if you are able to delete them although I have never had to do that.
I wish I’d found this post earlier.
This weekend, I hired a boiler repair company in Brooklyn, NY, relying on the rating & reviews at merchantcircle. Big mistake!
The company’s workmanship was poor. Bad enough. When I followed up with my concerns, they exploded into a rant of obscenities and F-bombs, B*tch, etc. It went beyond unprofessional. It was bizarre and abusive. Sincerely, I explained my concerns calmly and objectively. Nothing I said should’ve provoked such an extreme reaction.
I left a review at merchantcircle. In response, the company chose to retaliate by posting my real name, real address, and other “information” about me & my home. Even though most of the so-called info they posted was flat-out wrong. What a pathetic attempt at intimidation. And what a great showcase of their own unprofessionalism.
Also, one other bad review of this company was deleted at some point today. And parts of my original review seem to be missing.
Don’t believe the ratings on merchantcircle. They’re utterly unreliable.
If anyone’s interested at gawking at the ridiculousness. The company is:
NY City Boilers
2337 McDonald Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11223
They also list their business address as 15 Sloan Pl.
FALSE AD ON MERCHANT CIRCLE.
Hi, I am the owner of Brink Roofing also known as Brink’s Kanga Roof “We hop to it”.
I typed up brink roofing in a search to see what I would get.
I got merchant circle, and went to the site. Then I clicked on Brink Roofing where it said this….Qoute…..roofing,shingles-we work thru your homeowners insurance,and don`t carry workman`s compensation ,to save you money we also classify our workers as subcontractors,this way we keep your job as cheap as possible
Payment: we prefer cash to save you money ,so we don`t have to pay taxes or declare your job as income
I can’t believe this. What an outrage! Who should I be mad at here. Did Merchant Circle allow one of my competitors to post this? Have you heard about this happening before? I tried to claim the ad so that I could change it and it just made another listing, but didn’t take that one off. So, I put Spam/Fake ad in the comments section.
Of course I can’t get ahold of anyone. I called information to get their phone number and they said the address doesn’t exist. Please help!
Kyle
brinkroofing11@yahoo.com
For the money involved in promoting anyone’s business, M/C falls short. I haven’t made a dime. And I’m glad that I didn’t get more financially involved. It’s the sign of the times. The only ones making money in this economy are those who claim to offer you ways to be profitable. They make tons of money on Google ad space while we as merchants go broke!
As a small business owner I like what you have to say, and also want to comment on one problematic area with all “reviews.” I don’t think that reviews should be erased - on the other hand, after 35 years of great client relations and many return clients and hundreds of clients, we have had three clients that were, frankly, fruitcakes, and then maybe another 3-4 who we had differences with where they were unwilling to work with us to resolution.
Sometimes they actually broke their contract and would not meet us halfway. Maybe one of these was simply where we were at fault and they got mad — even though we tried to accomodate and satisfy them in some way. None were willing to go to small claims, so none actually thought they had a case –HOWEVER, they might have written a bad review. Had they doen so, I would have wanted to simply write a rebuttal statement — such as is done on eBay, which I think is entirely fair. And yes, clients sometimes write good reviews — but many busy clients simply don’t take the time, though our business is greatly augmented by referrals.
Food for thought — from one who might have had a bad review from one out of hundreds of clietns and would simply like to write a rebuttal!
Thanks for the warnging about merchant circle — it is not our first choice though they placed us on their site. We have had reviews to merchant circle (clients told me)though they have not been published, probably because we are not advertisers with them
Hey there, interesting and insightful post!
I also find it “interesting” how searches for businesses in Google return a Merchant Circle result….a definite monopoly.
Our company has a MC account, I thought it would be a useful source of traffic for our site and to network with local businesses. Sure the connections are there, but the buck stops at MC with the traffic.
MC users are encouraged to set up their listing with information that would otherwise be gained from your site. Little follow up to your actual site is achieved. Then there is the issue of actually converting any traffic you get….so far we have $0.00 from MC listing views and the small amount of traffic that has viewed out proper site.
Lucky for us, we have a free MC account. We intend to keep it that way.
Kyle - here is a number for an MC Account Manager - Meagan Kennedy - 408-334-3900 . Hope that helps.
Cody,
Fastmetrics
I am actually listed with them but no one pays for the service. It is totally free and just gets your hits up through web crawlers. If you own a site and want it to be hit, then you have to get the name out there in many areas to get robots to crawl it. They just offer the same service that yahoo, yellowpages, and others do. I am not sure why you think it is so bad of a place, since it is totally free advertisement for any site. I have been in business for 16 years and on their list for 2 of those and have had success with getting referals. Not sure why you are mad at them for offering advertisements for companies, but that in no way insures anything about the business they list. But neither does the phone book for that matter. Just my 2 cents worth…which in todays time is only worth 1/2 cent.
Wow, this is horrible on so many levels I don’ t even know where to begin. There are so many offenses in every area - ethical, marketing, service - that I applaud you for managing to write a post that was not 10 pages long. There is another company out there TrustFx.com who has taken the opposite approach - opting for honesty, ethics and transparency. It makes companies like Merchant Circle stick out like a sore thumb. Thank you for taking time to research and share with your audience. If I had heard anywhere else I would not have believed it.
I guess I may be one of the few people out there that actually feel differently about MC. I have been a member since December and the site has increased my exposure quite a bit on search engines. I have actually received a few extra calls because of being found on that site. Sure, there are some downfalls with it in some aspects, but for the most part, it has been a great help to me. But I don’t rely on it solely, and I hope that no one else does either. It’s just another SEO bump in my opinion.
That statement is enough to totally discredit whatever ratings service / site who offers this to sweeten their deal. Consumers need to made aware of these services so that they can make informed choices as to which ratings service is honest
You clearly have too much time on your hands. I could go into more detail to elaborate why this article is foolish but why waste my time and energy.
Here is a good one for you! I ALMOST signed up yesterday until I found this blogpage. I exited out of “Merchant circle” just in time NOT to verify my account.
I recieve an email today from them stating this. And I quote…” Your invation has been accepted by “****” company. Now that ***** has joined your network, we encourage you to write a positive review of their business. Each review you write adds value to your network increasing traffic to your site.” WHAT? I have never been to this business but they want me to not only write a review but a favorable one in the disconnected “hope” that it will increase traffice to my site. HOW? What kind of games are they playing?
Mark
I am tired of people calling my cell phone and asking for Computer Edge. One caller tonight indicated that people may be getting my cell phone number from Merchants Circle. If so, I would like them to cease and desist and make amends for the calls I have to pay for.
← Previous Comments