The story is well-known by now. Kat Coble and husband go to ‘headhunter’. Headhunter (J.L. Kirk) wants the big bucks to just to help with the headhunt and they want the bucks up front AND they resort to high-pressure tactics reminiscent of one of those ‘special opportunities’ presented in a cheap hotel meeting room.
Kat’s not thrilled. Kat’s a blogger. Doing the math here: Kat blogs. J.L. Kirk reads the blog and responds with an incredible ‘bizarro world*’ business response, fraught with personal information. Kat posts their response ‘word for word’ (give em’ enough rope..). Kirk hires big-time kick-ass law firm. Law Firm sends cease and desist letter demanding that the blog-posts be removed.
Apparently no one in the kick-ass law firm understands the power of blogs or how Google works. Lots and lots of other bloggers picked up on the story. I’m guessing people who hire kick-ass law firms don’t necessarily choose the Google method for selecting representation.
BUT, and this is a kick-ass but, people who choose head-hunter firms DO use Google. And guess what, if you enter ‘J.L. Kirk’ in Google right now, and you can count (I know that most of you are excellent counters), count the positive J.L. Kirk entries on the first three pages of the Google response to the ‘J.L. Kirk‘ search query.
Right now, there are only 5, repeat FIVE, of the first 30 entries with positive things to say about J.L. Kirk. Last Friday, when the TXAXP.COM blogger checked Google, there were 13 ‘positive’ entries. Two days later, FIVE.
Not only did Kirk and the kick-ass law firm ‘blow this one up real good’, the shake-out has encourage other bloggers out to share their own negative experiences.
Sometime last year, when one of my favorite bloggers, Sarcastro (I’m too lazy to look up the post), blogged about a bad experience he had a Bobby’s Dairy Dip on Charlotte Avenue. When the owners of Bobby’s read the blog, they didn’t threaten Sarcastro, they didn’t hire a kick-ass (or dumb-ass) law firm, they didn’t badmouth Sarcastro, nor did they go public with what a wonderful place they were and anyone who thinks otherwise has milk-shakes for brains.
What did they do? They wrote Sarcastro a letter, apologizing for his experience and offered to comp him for a meal in the future. As Montell Jordan once said, THIS IS HOW WE DO IT.
Update Sunday evening: Positive Google entries for J.L. Kirk are down to THREE items on the first three pages. Negative reviews take up most of TEN pages.
MSNBC’s ‘Clicked‘ blog picked up the story on Friday.
*Bizarro world is rooted in the Superman comic book mythology. In Bizarro world you do exactly the OPPOSITE of what a normal person does in our world.
Salem's Lots 
There were five positive results on Google among the first 30. Now we’re down to three.
(Follow the link for more challenging news from Ask and Live, though…).
Regards!
-tdaxp
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Dan – i hope the Ask.com folks don’t send me letters to cease and desist, but I have been totally disappointed in the results of any Ask.com queries I’ve performed, esp. when compared with the same search on Google.
Dear Mr. Hutchmo,
My client, Ask.com, demands that you retract that last comment and delete it entirely from the interent forever by midnight tomorrow, or we’ll sue you.
Sincerely,
Ask.com’s lawyer
Dear Ask.Com’s lawyer:
Your firm is comprised of knuckleheads. While I identify with that level of competency, I must take my stand and refuse to comply.
Ask.com doesn’t sue — they just blacklist bloggers.
if nothing else, blogging is a great source of words or re-inventing old words..kirking and astroturf…who woulda though it.
Dan -thanks for the link. Further reason to stay way from ask.com!
Here’s where I win the “flaunt your ignorance” game, because I have NEVER heard of “Ask.Com”
Ever.
Just a quick post that Google’s preference for recency makes Google easy to conquer but hard to hold. The focus should be on Live and Ask, because victory on those search engines will be longer lasting.
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