Have you come across this snippet of information in the last few weeks?

We have just stumbled upon an article that states on September 22nd, Google released a new update to their so-popular toolbar called SideWiki and looking at it, this update could spell all kinds of trouble for your ecommerce business!

Basically, what it boils down to is that anybody using the Google toolbar (and we are talking thousands and thousands of people here) can add a comment to your website.

If they add good or complimenary comments about your site or business then obviously this would be very helpful to you and probably generate more sales.

The problem is, what if they don’t? What if they leave bad, negative comments that will obviously damage your business?

As it stands now, if a user has the Google toolbar and any sort of Google profile—Gmail, AdWords, AdSense or Google Checkout then he or she has free rein to make comments about your website in google search listings. The comments show up on the left hand side of the web site page.

This could be catastophic for your online reputation if your competitors or just some nasty person with a perverted sense of mischief decides to bombard your business website with malicious and harmful comments.

You might notice a sudden drop in sales over a few days, and then check your website only to discover that someone has left a malicious comment.

It doesn’t matter that it isn’t true, the visitors to your site have no way of knowing whether it’s true or not, do they? They’ll take it as gospel and run a mile without buying anything.

Not only are you unable to delete comments of this nature, there is no way to opt out, nor a moderation queue so that you can approve or disapprove later.Once the comments are made, they’re there until Google removes them At this point, that’s your only way of getting rid of them. If someone leaves untrue or malicious comments on your website, you are supposed to notify Google and then wait patiently for them to remove the unwanted comments.

You might have a long wait, as there seem to be a LOT of irate ecommerce business owners grappling with this problem as this is being written. So Google probably has its hands full at the moment.

An enterprising programmer has come up with a download called the SideWiki Comment Blocker. You can check it out and learn more about how to protect your business from this potentially very serious threat here: http://www.swikiblocker.com/?id=redspell 

Hopefully Google will take action to correct this dismal state of affairs in the near future if enough people complain about it. But until then, you might want to consider getting the download to block unwanted comments.