Reputation research is necessary for all websites and content creators you encounter, to the extent that an established reputation can be found. Do not just assume websites you personally use have a good reputation. Please do research! You might be surprised at what you find. 2.6.2 Sources of Reputation Information Look for information written by a person, not statistics or other machine-compiled information. News articles, Wikipedia articles, blog posts, magazine articles, forum discussions, and ratings from independent organizations can all be sources of reputation information. Look for independent, credible sources of information. Sometimes, you will find information about a website that is not related to its reputation. For example, pages like Alexa have information about Internet traffic to the website, but do not provide evidence of positive or negative reputation. You can ignore this information since it's not helpful for Page Quality rating. 2.6.3 Customer Reviews of Stores/Businesses Customer reviews can be helpful for assessing the reputation of a store or business. However, you should interpret these reviews with care, particularly if there are only a few. Be skeptical of both positive and negative user reviews. Anyone can write them, including the creator of the website or someone the store or business hires for this purpose. When interpreting customer reviews, try to find as many as possible. Any store or business can get a few negative reviews. This is completely normal and expected. Large stores and companies have thousands of reviews and most receive some negative ones. It is also important to read the reviews because the content of the reviews matter, not just the number. Credible, convincing reports of fraud and financial wrongdoing is evidence of extremely negative reputation. A single encounter with a rude clerk or the delayed receipt of a single package should not be considered negative reputation information. Please use your judgment.
2.6.4 How to Search for Reputation Information Here is how to research the reputation of the website:
1. Identify the <homepage= of the website. For example, for the IBM website, ibm.com is the homepage. You may need to identify the creator of the content, if it is different from that of the overall website.
2. Using ibm.com as an example, try one or more of the following searches on Google:
● [ibm -site:ibm.com]: A search for IBM that excludes pages on ibm.com. ● [<ibm.com= -site:ibm.com]: A search for <ibm.com= that excludes pages on ibm.com. ● [ibm reviews -site:ibm.com] A search for reviews of IBM that excludes pages on ibm.com. ● [<ibm.com= reviews -site:ibm.com]: A search for reviews of <ibm.com= that excludes pages on ibm.com. ● For content creators, try searching for their name or alias. Note: When searching for reputation information, try to find sources that were not written or created by the website, the company itself, or the individual. For example, IBM might have official Facebook or Twitter pages that it closely maintains, which would not be considered independent sources of reputation information about the company. See here for a Wikipedia article on identifying and using independent sources.
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