MyWOT

If you have ever heard of the browser plug-in, MyWOT, then you probably know just how much it can affect the traffic to your site.

I am currently looking for a few people who have experience with MyWOT, negative or positive to share that experience as well as a few members of the MyWOT community to help us rate a few sites to see if we can figure out exactly what this company is up to.

Please reply to this thread if you are interested.

Thanks!

Lot's of spam on BHW lately...

TBH this isn't spam, myWOT is a very real site which has an impact on sites which dont match their criteria.

Its like a well formed anti scam site, which like the not so well made scam forums, is open to abuse and reputation tweaking.

My bad. Sorry. But I do now tend to assume someone with 1 post is going to be spam rather than real person. You can remove my posts if you think it would be a good idea.

ardley216 said:

My bad. Sorry. But I do now tend to assume someone with 1 post is going to be spam rather than real person. You can remove my posts if you think it would be a good idea.

Click to expand...

Nah it's a fair assumption, if i hadn't run foul of myWOT before, I may have jumped to the same conclusion

All I'll say is that despite MyWot's claim to have "advanced systems against manipulation" it can be manipulated 100% for good or bad purposes.

I had a competitor attack my company site with a mywot botnet and it made my rating go from the 90's to low 20's (in just a few hours!!!) and took 3 months to recover. MyWot denied the attack claiming that there systems were basically fool proof... and didn't respond to any subsequent emails. I even submitted a forum request for a mod to checkout my site and no one would rate it

Yeah these 'trust' sites are going to collapse on themselves - a lot of them are nothing more than elaborate scams to extract money from businesses, even the best of them are failing in their duties to their users and the businesses they allow to be slandered / libeled

Thank you for your replies.

And I am aware that I only have one post. I apologize if that makes you a little nervous about this post, but I can assure you that I am serious.

I am interested in the "bot" that you mentioned. I work for a company that is looking to combat MyWOT. This need came about when one of our clients discussed with us how their MyWOT ratings affected their main source of advertising, where they spent over 1 Million dollars a month, simply because they had a negative MyWOT rating.

There has to be a way to combat this.

Thanks again.

Our site has also become a victim of MyWOT. I hesitate in posting our domain name for fear they will find this forum and make things even worse.

Based on my research, mywot is a company in Finland that targets small US owned companies to extort money out of them. The only way to get your rating back up is to pay for a 'trust certificate'.. basically a ransom of 49.90 euros per month. If you are ok with this extortion, that is all you have to do. If not, do NOT claim you are the owner of the domain on their site. Once you do, they will harass you until you pay, and flame your site if you don't.

I refuse to give in to the ransom and do not have deep pockets to fight it.

If anyone has successfully restored their rating without paying, I'm all ears. Otherwise I am going to continue telling everyone I know to uninstall mywot because of its destruction of legitimate businesses, under the guise of being helpful.

joebagadonuts said:

Our site has also become a victim of MyWOT. I hesitate in posting our domain name for fear they will find this forum and make things even worse.

Based on my research, mywot is a company in Finland that targets small US owned companies to extort money out of them. The only way to get your rating back up is to pay for a 'trust certificate'.. basically a ransom of 49.90 euros per month. If you are ok with this extortion, that is all you have to do. If not, do NOT claim you are the owner of the domain on their site. Once you do, they will harass you until you pay, and flame your site if you don't.

I refuse to give in to the ransom and do not have deep pockets to fight it.

If anyone has successfully restored their rating without paying, I'm all ears. Otherwise I am going to continue telling everyone I know to uninstall mywot because of its destruction of legitimate businesses, under the guise of being helpful.

Click to expand...

I am so sorry to hear this. Your story sounds very similar to one of the clients that my company is dealing with.

It is my understanding that you are only able to buy a seal of trust once you are in good standing with MyWOT, or if you have no ratings at all. According to the language on their website, you cannot buy this trust seal if you are not trusted, so them asking you to pay for something to fix your ratings is news me and I would like to speak to you more about it.

I am currently trying to create several accounts and bump them up to platinum status, because I do not know if you know this or not, but there are some raters in the MyWOT community who are more respected than others. Platinum members have the ability to rate hundreds of websites at once and their ratings are weighted more heavily than others.

My theory is, if you have a bunch of platinum members rate a site, chances are WOT will not catch on, because they do a really good job of weeding out spam and etc in the early stages of accounts. For example, I have been banned simply for using the same computer. The more trusted you are, the less likely they are to peg you. That's the idea anyway.

If you are interested in helping out, or discussing things further, please let me know here or in a PM.

I tried sending you a PM but do not have 15 posts in the forum so it would not allow me.

I am interested in hearing if you are successful in your attempt to build up your WOT rating legitimately. So far I have not been successful in doing that, and have seen some of our positive comments removed even though they are coming from legitimate unique users. We have also seen disagreements with the negative posts being removed.

I have yet to claim ownership of our site due to the warnings I have found in other forums. You can understand my apprehension in doing so.

Please keep us all posted on your progress. I wish you luck.

Okay - here is some S**t on MyWOT.

First, comments have no effect on the MyWOT rating. Its in their Terms and Conditions, and they have survived several EU lawsuits. Its been audited. Comments don't matter. Only ratings do.

Second, there are "power users" in MyWOT that have tools to mass-evaluate sites. Also, different raters have different rating weights that are all proprietary and secret. The power reviewers are very defensive about their ratings.

Third, there are significant politics involved. While ratings are supposed to be relatively neutral from a political view, there is a significant anti-conservative bent to ratings. Also, MLMs, Clickbank products, Internet Marketing stuff, and related stuff all get negative ratings irrespective of the site's technical safety.

Also, they can be a bit biased against third-world IMers.

Want to avoid problem? For your money sites:

• Give up forum profile spam.
• Use a real name and address for your whois. And make sure to use a completely different whois from your other SEO or spam sites.
• Have a realistic privacy statement and terms and conditions page.
• Host your money sites on big-name commercial hosting services like 1and1, HostGator, etc.
• Join MyWOT, install the toolbar, rate some sites. Have a legitimate profile that also links to a legit Disqus and Gravatar profile. Then claim your site.

Most reviewers could care less if they put you out of business. If you get tripped up, appeal. I have walked several people through successful appeals - you have to respond directly to the ratings concerns once you challenged the ratings itself. Be patient and think like left-wing socialists (for the record, I am often thought of by many of my friends as a left-wing socialist, so that's not a dig lol)

Oh boo to the 15 message rule.

That's OK though.

I am slowly but sure earning points are reputation with the WOT widget. I wish that this process was a little bit quicker, but at least things are moving and I haven't been banned recently. LOL.

I will keep you posted on my progress for sure.

If anyone has gold, silver or platinum mywot accounts - PM me you skype, I could pay you for ratings.