How to remove your company from Reclame Aqui » Portal Insights

Although Brazil has a Consumer Protection Code (CDC) and a relatively efficient judicial system, when compared to other countries, Reclame Aqui is still the most relevant platform when it comes to company complaints.

But in the same way that Reclame Aqui can be a dream for consumers seeking their consumer rights, for companies it can become a real nightmare.

This is because having complaints on Reclame Aqui in itself is already harmful to the brand, but they can also generate a huge loss in sales when complaints appear on Google whenever someone searches for the company name.

Take, for example, V4 Company, which is today the largest Digital Marketing consultancy in the country. Searching for the company name on Google, today Reclame Aqui appears in third place in organic search results.

Considering that V4 Company has at least 27,100 monthly searches and the third Google result has an average of 11% CTR, we can confidently estimate that 2,700 people who search for V4, every month, see complaints on Reclame Aqui.

Without needing to do much more math than that, you can already imagine the size of the damage that Reclame Aqui causes to the company.

How can I remove my company name from Reclame Aqui?

Although there are rumors that it is possible to pay Reclame Aqui to remove your company's name, this is extremely unlikely. What we actually know is that there are only two ways to prevent your company's page on Reclame Aqui from appearing to anyone who searches for it on Google: legal proceedings or dominance in search results (SERP domination).

The first option obviously involves the Brazilian judicial process. You need to file a request via Special Courts, preferably with a lawyer, to ask Reclame Aqui to remove it.

Although there are many lawsuits in this regard, we were unable to find any successful case in which a company was successful in asking for its name to be removed from the platform.

The court understands that Reclame Aqui does not produce content against the company (the users are the ones who do) and all information made available is public. Furthermore, Reclame Aqui itself makes it clear that…

“… it is an independent channel, a content platform, that allows any Brazilian citizen to exercise two rights that are guaranteed by the federal constitution: freedom of expression and the right to inform. Given the Brazilian rights of the federal constitution, it is not necessary for the company to authorize the registration, as it is requested by the consumer who has every right to complain.”

Therefore, going through legal channels is possible but, honestly, unlikely to be successful.

Search engine dominance, also known as SERP domination, is much easier and more likely to be successful. This technique does not remove your company from Reclame Aqui, but it causes your company's page on the website to go to the second page of Google and, therefore, becomes much more inaccessible.

After all, when was the last time you looked at the results on the second page of Google?

Take, for example, Magalu. She has thousands of complaints on Reclame Aqui but the first page of Google is dominated by her own results.

How to do SERP domination, in practice?

• Have more than one domain for your company, but without duplicating the content. For example, you can have an official website hosted at www.suaempresa.com.br and a more institutional landing page, talking about your differences and history, at www.sobresuaempresa.com.br.
• Have complete profiles on as many social networks as possible. The more complete your profile on the social network, the greater the chance of your profile appearing on the first page of Google when someone searches for your name.
• Do press office work so that major vehicles talk about your company. These large vehicles have a high domain authority and the chances of these pages that talk about your company appearing in front of Reclame Aqui are very high.
• Apply good SEO practices to your domains so that they have more “strength” than Reclame Aqui.

In short, today the only way to remove your company from Reclame Aqui is through legal means, which in addition to being time-consuming, has a low chance of working. Therefore, the way we most recommend is not necessarily removing your company from there, but rather dominating the first page of Google results with SERP domination actions.

In other words, push the Reclame Aqui result to the second page of Google.

Regardless of whether or not you remove the company name from Reclame Aqui, it is worth highlighting that responding to consumers is a great way to show that your company cares about them. Therefore, always seek excellent service on and off the platform.

Just as you would have a good impression of a company that responds to everyone with professionalism, your potential customers will have the same feeling.