business listings/reviews

[FirstPageResults]

Who owns business data (name, phone, address etc) or is it in the public domain?

I have data mined 1000's of business details for my niche. But in the past I've seen and heard about businesses asking for their information to be removed etc.

For Example:

I put up a business listing and it gets 5 reviews slamming it. The listing ranks really well in Google so obviously the business owner is not going to be very happy.

The business owner then contacts me and demands I remove the content.

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Has anyone had experience in dealing with issues like this?

IMO the reviews belong to the user or the website but I'm not 100% sure on the business information. In the past I've seen people remove listings just to appease.

 

[loho27]

Let Them Hang

The best thing you can do is give them the "right of reply".

Do not let them bully you. The moment you pull it down your site loses its integrity.

Reviews are the way of the future, a positive review is the best selling tool that a company can have.

These company's that use the latest trends eg Facebook, twitter etc must leave themselves open to review. So they have to be prepared for bad as well as good feedback.

Here is a great article regards to reviews and I tink you are on to something

http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/

This also goes for our transparent politicians they are in a rush to appeal to so called new markets utilizing the latest web technologies etc.

Who can remember what Google did to George W Bush?

 

[FirstPageResults]

Even for your own business (such as an estore) if you have reviews it gives you more cred to post negative ones (within reason) with the glowing reviews.

Interesting about the politicians. I remember a few years ago hearing something about Google working on an app that would analyse all past data to determine if what someone promised (politician) is likely to be accurate.