–noun
1. a confidence game or other fraudulent scheme, esp. for making a quick profit; swindle.
–verb (used with object)
2. to cheat or defraud with a scam.
Origin:
1960–65; orig. carnival argot; of obscure orig.
—Related forms
scammer, noun
One of the newest cottage industries to spring up in the Internet age is Reputation Management. Sure, marketing companies have been doing versions of this forever. For many business owners, though, the recent explosion in the industry is one of those head scratchers that you hear about and picture dollar bills with little wing affixed just flying out the door or you think, “That’s only for oil companies spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf Coast region.” That is, until something happens to your business’ online reputation.
While this blog is intended to help you with merchant processing information, we thought we would share an experience, how it can happen to you more easily than you think, and what you can do to help your company’s online reputation if something like this should happen. Because, based on The Funds Transfer Alliance’s experience, it’s more common than you might think.
Here at The Funds Transfer Alliance, we’re unfortunately being connected to the term “scam” in a Google search before you even see any results. Yes, unfortunately, when you type “funds transfer alliance” in the Google search bar, ten suggested searches drop down and scam and fraud following our name are in the top 10. These suggestions, aptly, are called Google Suggest results.
So, like us, you’re asking how these Suggest results got erroneously associated with our trade name and how prevalent this problem is for other well-respected American corporations? We at The Funds Transfer Alliance obviously had those questions, too. Furthermore, you’re rightfully wondering how easily this can happen to you… Well, after months of research regarding how Google’s algorithms create these search and Suggest results and cataloguing countless other entities and corporations and not-for-profits who suffer from the same search or suggest result plight, we have discovered that a wide variety of factors combine to lead to these results gaining Google Suggest traction.
Like many companies in many industries, we had no thought of or desire to monitor our online reputation until a few months ago. By researching other companies’ situations, we know we first became aware of the search suggestion in a common way, from a source outside of our company. After all, who sits around and Google’s their company. But you should. Do it. Now. It’s easy to just assume everything out there is a reflection of your integrity but you’d be wrong. This is exactly like checking your personal credit.
In our case, a sharp young recruit unexpectedly backed out of an offer we thought was very solid. Because the hiring process had gone so well up until that point, we inquired about why they seemed to have changed their mind. Well, after a simple Google search of our name and bearing witness the “Funds Transfer Alliance Scam” and “Funds Transfer Alliance Fraud” suggested results, the applicant relayed their immediate reconsideration of our offer and chose in the end not to leave their current employer. That was several months ago and since then these results have actually risen higher in Suggest.
And our investigation began… We hope that the very intriguing information we unraveled will aid you and your business. Like you, we come to work every single day believing in the value and integrity of our services and products. We know you do too. There’s no other way to be successful. But when you’re fighting a hidden online enemy or enemies or a super secret algorithm, and there’s no one blame and it feels like it’s you against Google, which for all intents and purposes owns the Internet, it feels like you’re stranded on an island.
Based on our research, here’s some advice if you haven’t started your company or picked your website yet: make up a word or phrase. Think about our name: The Funds Transfer Alliance. As an incorporated entity in the electronic monies transfer and merchant acquiring industry, you are probably not surprised that our name signifies both our position in the industry and our role and, as you can expect, The Funds Transfer Alliance name holds deep meaning. However, to Google’s search spiders, which are artificially “intelligent” coded arachnoids that register the entire World Wide Web and their cousin, the devilishly complicated search algorithm, those words have neither relevance nor real meaning by themselves. But the fact that we use such common words has definitely hurt us severely. As you will see below, each word in our name is frequently associated with words in the typical “Nigerian email scam.”
So for Google to provide consistently usable results, with meaning and quality that will keep searchers coming back, logic is, from time to time, overshadowed by frequency and probability. As demonstrated below, there are inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the Google Suggest results that we have discovered through extensive testing since the time we originally saw the suggestion. While theoretically blending mathematical objectivity and computer scientist-outlined subjectivity, everything below exemplifies how short it can fall.
But first, the best way to keep track of what’s being said about your company online is a Google alert for your company’s name. This will give you an almost real time view of what is being said about your company. But don’t panic when you get one, if you’re anything like us, you’ll mostly receive something like this:
MoneyGram and Visa Introduce Cash-to-Visa Card Money Transfer ...
By Collections Recon
Once funds are sent to the card, recipients can access the money 24-hours-a-day, anywhere Visa is accepted. “Visa money transfer services simplify the way people send and receive money both domestically and across borders,” said Jim McCarthy, Global Head of ... “We are glad that we had made an alliance of this type with Visa and MoneyGram, an alliance that will provide Guatemalans in the United States and in Guatemala, access to a new way of sending and receiving money.
By Collections Recon
Once funds are sent to the card, recipients can access the money 24-hours-a-day, anywhere Visa is accepted. “Visa money transfer services simplify the way people send and receive money both domestically and across borders,” said Jim McCarthy, Global Head of ... “We are glad that we had made an alliance of this type with Visa and MoneyGram, an alliance that will provide Guatemalans in the United States and in Guatemala, access to a new way of sending and receiving money.
See how it contains our name but doesn’t refer to us? Some do, some don’t. Definitely worth keeping track of… But this is why you should use a made up name for your company or product lines when possible. Avoid associations!
Speaking of associations, you are hopefully familiar with the now infamous Nigerian, Russian, or Indonesian funds transfer scams. Hopefully EVERYONE is familiar with these scams by now! There are many. Often arriving by email because they can send hundreds of thousands at once and with promises of untold gobs of cash for the taking with just a little investment on your part, some poor, unfortunate traveler who is the niece of a wealthy aristocrat wants to create a strong alliance with while she’s in the states that will fund your every whim… if you could just please accept her cashier’s check and then transfer several hundred dollars in funds back for her plane ticket… This is pretty typical funds transfer scam. There are quite literally 1000s and 1000s of examples of “funds transfer” scams and fraud descriptions online because every person on Earth with an email account gets one of these emails occasionally.
Now, chances are your business doesn’t suffer from this exact problem. It’s definitely unique to us. But the examples below will show how you are not necessarily safe.
Like we said above, we’re definitely not alone with this problem. A noteworthy example is Locks of Love, which is a public, non-profit providing hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in North America suffering from long-term medically-related hair loss. Many are familiar with this organization and perhaps you even know someone who has donated hair to this cause. Unfortunately for Locks of Love, “Locks of Love scam” and “Locks of Love fraud” are both popular search suggestions:
Another popular non-profit suffering from the same Suggest fate is The Hunger Project, which is a well-known, international, non-profit attempting to fight world hunger.
If the preceding two examples are less familiar, perhaps the most prominent example we witnessed is the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Foundation? They have the same scam and fraud suggestion as many others.
After seeing these search results, one could argue Google searchers are simply concerned about non-profit abuses. You often hear statistics like 90-95% of donated funds should be directed to the cause and only 5-10% should be used for administration. So maybe people are hyper vigilant towards nonprofit abuses? Well, very large corporations we all do business with in some form everyday are treated no differently. Because they are so heavily represented on the Web, the first Suggest results are not “scam” for huge multinational corporations, but they still get hit with the same suggestions. Try searching a company in your industry and see if the scam suggestion autopopulates. Look at the communications industry competitors below. “Scam” is suggested fourth for both.
If you take the “scam” and “fraud” search a letter further for Visa and MasterCard searches, the larger picture of the funds transfer and merchant acquiring industry’s dilemma becomes very apparent: tons of scams and fraudulent activity-based suggestions.
The Funds Transfer Alliance’s research on this topic has engendered a degree of cynicism in this product. For example, type the word “why” in the Google search bar and wait for the Suggest results. As of the time of this writing, the top search suggestion is “why can’t I own a Canadian.” While this may be amusing to some, on a grander scale it is disappointing because it’s very unlikely that the majority of Google searchers who are about to ask “why…” are truly interested in inquiring about owning a Canadian. This is irrefutable evidence the results can be manipulated by a select few using various search engine optimization techniques. This one is called Google Bombing.
In a mountain of research, we were unable to find many organizations that were free of a scam or fraud suggestion altogether. In most cases, Suggest led to results that talked about scams and frauds using their names, etc. But it still suggested and it’s hard to discern exactly the cause. So we started thinking long term. Who is the most universally revered person in the last century (Ghandi, The Pope, Martin Luther King Jr.), and does that revered person endure from the same Google treatment? If Mother Teresa is a choice that comes to mind, then the answer is yes. The Dalai Lama? Same thing. And when one searches for “Google” and “scam,” there are about 15.7M results, which just about the most.
The Funds Transfer Alliance is not insinuating that Google Suggest is a scam or a fraud. But it is not perfect. A French Court recently mandated the removal of the translation of “scam” and “fraud” Suggest results for some genuine French businesses. But that’s France. We are not waiting with baited breath for U.S. courts to do the same any time soon. In fact, we use Google Suggest and think it’s a valuable tool to refine many searches. However, it can also serve as the eternal propagator of a negative, self-reinforcing, feedback loop. While Google’s algorithms are similar the ever moving pot of gold at the end of rainbow, most search optimization experts believe the Suggest results are based minimally on content and extremely heavily on what people are actually searching. So it’s safe to assume that searchers click on these scam and fraud suggestions for no other reason than that they see them. As evidence, the only meaningful result for some scam suggestions is one individual’s blog ranting about their bad experience. They don’t need to provide proof or financial statements or anything of any substance whatsoever. It’s a free for all. Often no real facts are offered impugning the uprightness of the organization. One search engine optimization expert with whom we consulted claims sometimes search results exist in the top 10 simply because there’s nothing to return for a particular search that’s any better. In the case of the Funds Transfer Alliance, we have at least three results we describe as totally nonsensical in our top 10 scam results.
So, very simply, here’s how this can happen to you and what you can do about it:
Someone has a bad experience. They write about it in their moderately well read blog calling you a scam. Google already indexes their blog and provides it as a search suggestion. Now, suppose across the entire United States there are 1000 searches for you’re your name every day. Out of 1000 clicks, 100 times the first day scam or fraud becomes present in Suggest that suggestion is clicked and moves up one spot. The next day, because it’s higher and is gaining Suggest visibility, it’s clicked 250 times and on and on until it’s the top Suggest result. Now, not only is it clicked far more frequently, but accordingly, if the person has not heard of you, they won’t even bother clicking because they assume the very suggestion means there must be a plethora of scam content so what’s the point!?
In the message boards about this on Google.com, Google’s employees respond to business owners complaining about this exact problem with the notion that if the search results do not substantiate scam suggestion, organizations shouldn’t be worried. In an idealized world, yes, that makes sense. However, in our opinion, it is not intellectually rigorous. What Google fails to appreciate is that the very suggestion of a scam or fraud for businesses or charities with low visibility is enough to stop many researchers dead in their tracks.
In order to combat this reality if you find yourself with a bad search or suggest result, start by getting your business on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and even foursquare. They have all helped us… Google has been giving more and more weight to Facebook results recently because the site is so popular. Additionally, having an online presence will prevent that one person who has one bad experience from dominating the online discussion about your company. Take control. It’s not enough to simply hope it drops off because there’s nothing to substantiate it. Take our word for it. The suggestions only get worse, not better.
Hire a consultant if you can afford it. There are people and companies who test these various tactics all day on Google and have a good idea about how it works. While the Suggest is based on what people are searching, hiring an SEO consultant can help you control what the search results produce.
We hope to have shed light on how this can happen to a legitimate businesses. If your business has suffered from the same fate, we’d love to hear from you and the steps you took to resolve it.
