This is a site for people whom have had bad experiences with
WOT and tried to go through the correct channels to rectify the problem with no
results, please email us your contributions.. I started this site after I
discovered how biased WOT is.
One thing I would say that is of consolation to me and other
reputable webmasters is that WOT is not very important, in fact they have been
badly rated themselves so a bad rating from them does not mean as much as they
think it does.
WOT s mission is to make money by scaremongering, they sell
webmasters their badge at an annual fee and also beg / badger users for
"donations" at the bottom of every page rank in your browser is a reminder that
they want you to give them money as a user, Why ? they are a commercial business. Would you
donate money to any other commercial business? or would a reputable business
even ask you to? I don't think so.
This asking for money is coming at a time when they are bragging that they are
moving to new offices, and no longer in a shopping centre car park
I mistakenly used to think it was a way for ordinary users
whom had a bad experience with a website to warn other people of the dangers; by
this I mean sites that have viruses, malicious downloads, hacked sites,
spammers, and phishing sites etc. Not sites where somebody cant find a product
they are looking for or don't like the picture quality or font, or in my case
the site owner. internet security is very important, no doubt about it, but it's
best left to the professionals to rate a site and not vindictive competitors or
even misguided amateurs. I admit that many are probably well meaning, but I have
seen many mistakes and hence incorrect ratings so I think WOT is a dangerous
tool in the wrong hands, albeit some are well meaning. A bad customer experience
made public would be a great thing, but these are not customers or even
potential customers that have demeaned my sites as bad, and I see from the forum
hundreds of others had the same experience.
WOT is
just a bug, don't encourage it to breed so it can attack businesses
I used to have faith in WOT website ratings, I wrongly thought that it would
be unbiased because it was written by the public and not an individual
critic, however I personally had a bad experience when I asked for one of my
sites to be reviewed, the site in question is one of four that I own, it has
been live trading on-line for over ten years, with no comments / reviews /
ratings, good or bad from WOT, two days after asking people to look at my
site and give me comments, one guy was not happy with my P&P terms, he was
not specific, but is a new member, with thousands of posts (very odd), he
does not answer my emails so I don't know what the problem is / was. After I
complained about this all four of my sites now have the red circle claiming
my sites have a bad reputation; this is absolutely untrue, I complained to
WOT and they say that they are simply a hosting company, this too is not
true because they are also the software developer that allows one comment
from one person to make all four of my sites as having a bad reputation,
despite my having McAfee secure and ISIS certification and thousands of
happy website customers. They are also flagged as safe by PCTOOLS, Browser
Defender
I feel this guy is a professional complainer with so many reviews (nearly
all bad) in such a short time, and does not discuss issues so his criticisms
are not trying to be constructive
Feb 2011.
Here is the profile of the guy that criticises others whilst being
anonymous, I would call that a hypocritical bigot, he had only been a member
for two months; suddenly he's a Silver member and has an activity score of 5773
WOT is a brilliant idea, but not their idea, the theory has already been
applied professionally by McAfee, Nortons, and PCTOOLS, WOT have only copied
the idea to seal their badges or use it as a tool or weapon for vindictive
people to discredit reputable websites
They have even copied the windows Vista and Windows 7 hour glass waiting
logo, down to the exact size with their circle
, admittedly
it's a different colour but it implies that they are in some way official,
or officially endorsed
Having now been a victim of uneducated, inexperienced, amateur reviewers and
vindictive kids I have read a lot about WOT on their forum and on the Internet,
I have found many hundreds of people that had a similar bad experience and whom
did not understand the WOT logic and had similar issues and confusion over bad
rating on good, well reputed websites.
I wrote to McAfee about this because I was concerned it may effect my websites
page ranking and they replied
"never heard of WOT so we don't think it's that important"
FirstFound said
"I see what you mean about the WOT site, but I recommend not worrying about
this one at this stage. I checked a few other pages and saw even some well
trusted websites (including YouTube.com with 58 hateful/illegal contents, 62
bad experience and more) so I would say it says a bit more about their site
than yours.
To be honest, I think it is simply down to lack of moderation - there is
clearly no quality control on the comments and anyone seems free to say
whatever they want. (I've added a brief 'good' review this afternoon).
The Mcafee one is likely to be a bit more trustworthy, as people who have
SiteAdvisor will see the green tick in the search results. I have to admit
I'd not heard of WOT until today, but I have been aware of SiteAdvisor for a
couple of years, so this is definitely the one to watch.
I should also say that none of this will have any effect on Google or search
engine rankings whatsoever, so is probably not something to become too
concerned about for now, but any past customers who would be happy to give a
good review on WOT may help to combat this slightly"
They seem to have many good sites with bad ratings and bad sites with good
rating, here is a site (nothing to do with me) that gets a good rating, and
yet loads of bad marks, still listed as a trustworthy site
It would be true to say that I am now angry with WOT because what they are
doing is irresponsible and damaging, they say that the system is based on
"complex algorithms" they are not so complex or clever, one of there guys gets
upset and a site that has been respected for decades is demeaned by them and
given a caution rating. And all of of sudden this makes the site untrustworthy
or not child friendly, just because the owner does not agree with their
opinions. I know of many sites that this has happened to and even their own
forum is full of people that don't’ understand - that’s because there is nothing
to understand, it doesn’t make any sense
Tue - 22/03/11
WOT seems to rate sites now WITHOUT visiting them, I had 4 unrated sites, I
asked one to be looked at and all 4 got red warnings, WOT claims to be a hosting
company, but they are also the producers of the software and refused to discuss
the matter with me. If I mention my sites here they will remove my entry as they
don't want the truth to come out. There are lots of discussions like this by
many others everywhere on the web
WOT responded to this forum post
"Don't go off topic..
You would get a red flag for this spamming!!! if you have any problem with
your website rating post a new topic....
If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it
must be a dinosaur."
What does that mean? sounds like the sort of thing that
somebody with nothing to say, would say :-)
March 2011 mycm now a platinum member, how can anybody
seriously review that many sites in so little time. ?
Today I got the latest listings from WOT, these do not seem possible to me,
how many sites could be reviewed by so few people so quickly, and they are not
customers of the site or subscribers, they just don’t like the screen colour,
font
etc. of the site. IF the users joined when the site WOT started (which they didn’t)
they would still have to review 10,000 websites a year, WOTrubbish
Look Here
Sun - 27/03/11
Only today another site of mine has been blacklisted, just a day after I
complained to WOT about the inaccuracy of it's ratings, I discovered the bulk of
the scoring is done by people who's vote has more weight than others, they are
given access to a mass rating tool, this way they can discredit dozens of sites
with a few mouse clicks, and not even have to take the time to examine the
sites. My new site has not taken any orders yet as it's not live, and still has
a bad customer
experiences, How is that possible ? I think WOT stands for Waste Of Time. As of
yet I have still not had a reply from WOT. Here is my letter to them
Mon - 18/04/11 - still no reply from anybody at WOT, so I give
up on that.
Another interesting situation is that the sites that WOT are
trying to sell their trusted site badge to seem to get a good rating regardless
of how many complaints, viruses and high jacking etc they force on other
computers; I guess this is so they aren't seen to be putting their paid for
badges on bad sites, instead, they "cleverly" make bad sites good. One example
is crawler.com, this site itself is apparently safe, but the toolbar it installs
is not. I personally had a bad experience of this and it seems like many others
did too
Crawler has a good WOT reputation, but loads of
bad customer experiences. (according to WOT)
This site openly declares that it is owned by Austin White
Ladders Ltd. so no Einstein is needed to discover that it is owned by Austin
White Ladders Ltd. but WOT imply they were shocked to discover this.
WOT is
just a bug, don't encourage it to breed so it can attack businesses 
, admittedly
it's a different colour but it implies that they are in some way official,
or officially endorsed
