Dwight Zahringer has owned a web development agency for the last decade, specializing in search engine optimization. He got so deep into SEO that he encountered negative SEO, a practice where businesses will work to lower the SEO of their competitors to gain an advantage, such as posting anonymous bad reviews online.
A year ago Zahringer launched a start-up to combat negative SEO.
TruReview specializes in providing a platform that enables real reviews to be posted by real customers. The start-up wants to provide a validation tool that gets rid of nefarious Internet anonymity so businesses can maximize online customer feedback.
"It's helping the business know how it's impacting the customers," Zahringer says.
TruReview's team of four people launched the platform last spring and is currently focusing on signing up local businesses in Metro Detroit as its first customers. Zahringer hopes it becomes a 21st-century version of the Better Business Bureau.
"Let's get back to the point of basic business principles where you could talk to the business owners and give real feedback," Zahringer says.
Source: Dwight Zahringer, CEO of TruReview
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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