Retail Report: SEO Loopholes, Fake Online Reviews, Walmarts Drones

Praise for Walmart’s Drone Plans

Amazon and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have both been making noises about drones for a while now. Amazon started talking about the possibility of drones delivering orders to consumers in record time. Walmart, for its part, pooh-poohed the delivery idea as impractical but began quietly researching other ways in which it could use drones.

It now looks like Walmart may have a winning strategy. For the past several years, Walmart has sought to address the ongoing issue of “out-of-stocks.” When store shelves are empty and customers can’t find the products they want or need, everyone suffers.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon and the rest of his team are working hard to address these issues. Potential solutions have included making investments in Walmart’s workforce as well as its IT department to address stocking concerns, and drones may now be an important part of this effort.

ZDNet.com reports:

“As opposed to Amazon’s drones, which are likely to be autonomous, Walmart’s idea is to use remote controlled flyers that can capture 30 frames per second of products on warehouse shelves. The information can be used to determine which items are incorrectly stocked and which are running low. According to Reuters, checking warehouses manually currently takes Walmart employees about a month. With drones the process will take a day.”

Media reports indicate that drones may be operating in Walmart warehouses in less than a year.

SEO Loopholes: What Business Owners Need to Know

For years, business owners and managers have relied on search engine optimization (SEO) to make their websites rank higher in search engines. SEO techniques have varied over the years, as Google and Bing continually tweak their algorithms so that their search sites serve up the most relevant content to internet users.

Why do search engines constantly change their algorithms? Because web development experts are also continuously changing (“optimizing”) their sites in hopes of “beating” search engine algorithms and getting a high ranking. In fact, there is now a whole industry dedicated to search engine optimization. Sites are now created for two separate audiences: human visitors and search engine bots that review the site’s structure and content for possible inclusion and promotion in search results.

In recent years, Google has been instituting algorithm changes with codenames such as “Penguin” and “Panda.” Once-successful websites lost huge amounts of traffic practically overnight after being penalized by the new algorithm. Still, SEO professionals were often able to address a site’s design and content deficiencies to restore the site’s search engine rank.

But as a recent TechCrunch article notes, technological advances continue to speed up. As a result, search engine algorithms are making use of artificial intelligence capabilities in new ways. This means that search engines are better able to analyze a site’s relevance and worth than before. Even up-to-date SEO techniques may soon become outdated as search engines simply become smarter.

The article concludes:

“In some ways, the deep learning methodology makes things simpler for SEOs. Knowing that RankBrain and similar technologies are almost on par with a human, the rule of law is clear: There are no more loopholes.”

Amazon Takes Action against Fake Reviews

Suppliers who are looking for a shortcut to success on Amazon (and other marketplace sites) beware: Amazon is on to you.

Getting good product reviews is an essential part of effectively marketing a product on Amazon and many other e-commerce sites. Recent studies show that consumers rely heavily on feedback from other customers, particularly starred reviews, when making product purchases. A high average star rating, combined with thoughtful and well-written comments, can sell a lot of product.

But reviews don’t affect only customer decisions. Amazon’s search and display algorithms take reviews into consideration. Products that have a lot of good reviews are more likely to be displayed to customers searching the site. This usually leads to more sales.

Some suppliers and third-party retailers have attempted to game Amazon’s rating system by paying people to submit fake reviews to the site. These fake reviews have presented serious issues for Amazon and its customers. Since Amazon customers can’t inspect a product before making a purchase, reviews have a strong impact on buying decisions. Trust is a crucial element in online sales, and that trust is broken when the information offered to a consumer turns out to be false.

Amazon has become more proactive regarding fake reviews and recently has taken businesses both to court and before arbitration boards. According to a recent Seattle Times article, Amazon has pursued at least one company that sells fake reviews to vendors, and has taken vendors to arbitration hearings. In the case of the vendors themselves:

“Amazon asks the arbitrator to ban these merchants from using the Amazon website, as well as set aside the profits obtained illegally with the fake reviews in a trust with Amazon as a beneficiary. It also wants damages and for the merchants to pay legal costs,” according to the Times.

While it may be frustrating to spend time waiting for positive reviews to trickle in, using unethical methods to garner positive feedback is likely to backfire. Companies selling in online marketplace environments need to develop ethical, long-term strategies for marketing products and developing relationships with customers.