IntelligentEye Blog

There was an article in the news recently about Ryanair and their dealings with someone who had openly created a website entitled "I Hate Ryanair: The Worlds Most Hated Airline".

 

Brand monitoring allows businesses to identify instances in which their company is the target of abuse or under attack from an outside source. Whether those attacks are warranted or not is another matter altogether.

 

I Hate Ryanair was set up by a disgruntled Ryanair passenger who had been subject to a particularly stressful flight along with his wife and new born baby. The website was set up for people to voice their own opinions of the airline and for articles about the failings of Ryanair.  

 

Once Ryanair had identified the website and owner, they were able to contact Nominet, a web arbitration service in charge of the use of domains in the .co.uk namespace. The owner of the website was less in trouble for the content on the site, as it is up to Ryanair to deal with the complaints and criticism of the customers, but more for the fact that money was being made off the back of the content of the website. 

 

A number of links on the site were aimed at earning revenue through clicks from site visitors. Nominet ruled that it wasn't ethical to use the Ryanair name in this way to make money. 

 

The saga continues as I Hate Ryanair has now been moved from the .co.uk domain space and is now using a .org domain name. The links have been removed but people are still free to vent about their experiences with Ryanair.

 

Ryanair were able to identify that this attack on their business was going on through brand monitoring. Brand monitoring has given them the power to step in and take control of the situation and ensure that they are able to address the concerns of their customers.