Last December, I wrote a pretty scathing post about Dolphin Music in which I vented my anger at the company’s poor customer service. I entitled that post “Recommendation: Don’t buy from Dolphin Music.”
Today I added some new content at the beginning of the post and changed the title to “Update: Dolphin Music does care about its customers.”
This is the first time I’ve ever changed the title of a published blog post.
I’m happy to make the change which is simply a fairer reflection of what I feel about Dolphin Music today without changing how I felt at the time I wrote the post.
The fairness aspect of this relates particularly to the results of Google searches on the keywords ‘dolphin music.’
So if you were doing a search for Dolphin Music - perhaps thinking about buying something from them - my original and distinctly negative post would show up in the top five search results, every time.
As this screenshot shows (click on it for a larger version) that I grabbed about 30 minutes ago, there I am, in this search appearing as the third result.
I wouldn’t normally be concerned about this if my negative feeling about a particular company remained the same. But it doesn’t in this case, as I explained in the additional text I added today to the original post.
While I have changed the post’s title, I have not changed the post’s URL, its permalink.
My thinking about this is that if I change the permalink, then anything linked to it will fail because the post’s address will have changed. My thinking is also related specifically to search engine results - I want the post to still keep showing up so that anyone who comes to it via search, for instance, will now see the additional content and the new title.
I might still change the permalink but, with the help of a nifty WordPress plugin called Redirect Old Slugs, do it in a way that the change will be wholly transparent and not affect the post showing up in all the right places including search engine results. Actually, I can’t really see any value in changing it. Can you?
Finally, I chatted on the phone last week with Jake Seabrook, the Customer Services Manager at Dolphin Music. With Jake’s permission, I’ll be publishing that conversation as an FIR podcast. I think you’ll be impressed by what Jake has to say about listening to customers and joining the conversation.
Hope to get the podcast posted in a few days.
