Use Negative Reviews Positively
Earlier this year, the blogosphere went crazy over the suspicion that Google may actually help bad guys win the search engine war via negative reviews. The idea is that a lot of negative product reviews, either genuine or bought, could push a website to a top search engine position. And that’s a position almost any webmaster would enjoy regardless of how it got there. However, negative reviews are, unfortunately, getting a bad rap through this type of press. Negative reviews, when genuine, actually protect us from making poor buying decisions.
Before I buy anything online for instance, I always look for a product’s or service’s negative reviews. It’s often easier to distinguish the genuine negative review from the bought, positive review, and for that reason, I simply trust it more. Negative reviews are often more detailed, honest, and personal, whereas positive reviews are, sometimes, nothing more than what appears to be copy and paste jobs. Contrast the following reviews:
Positive Review: “Great software! Works as expected!”
Negative Review: “This software is full of errors. I thought it was a joke at first, like maybe it was joke software. I can’t do anything but assume that this is a self-programmed thing. I don’t see an ounce of competency to suggest the developer is even a real programmer. Sudden crashes, irrelevant error messages, and failed saves is what you’ll get with this thing. I highly recommend you do yourself a favor and spend the dollars this software costs and buy yourself a box of toy jacks instead. At least you can rightfully expect those to randomly work.”
Which review sounds more detailed, honest, and personal? Though the second review is cruel in tone, it gives you an idea of what’s wrong and why you should avoid the product at all costs. For whatever reason, people often feel more compelled to explain themselves through a negative review. Rarely have I seen a negative review like “Bad software! Doesn’t work!” Negative reviews tend to be verbose, while positive reviews are, for the most part, pretty scant.
For this reason, I make the majority of my buying decisions based on these types of detailed, honest, and personal opinions. When I run into a product whose negative review chimes with what I know to be true, I don’t buy it. When I run into a product whose negative reviews outnumber its positive reviews, I recommend that others don’t buy it as well (based on the above reasons).
Should you use the same strategy, be careful not to rely on negative reviews exclusively. The trick to gleaning useful information from these reviews is to weigh them against their positive counterparts and your own knowledge and intuition. Should what you find outnumber what looks like faux ratings, and ring true with what you know and feel, then you know you can trust what you read.
Come see how negative reviews prevented the author from making a bad book investment at Amazon via http://www.justoutsourcing.com/wp/mit.
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