No. 1… with strings attached?

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This article was published 30/01/2024 (795 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A website ranking Winnipeg businesses is asking companies to pay for top spots while touting itself as 100 per cent reader supported.

Best in Winnipeg has at least 100 lists ranking the city’s greatest organizations. Its website claims more than 100,000 Winnipeg residents rely on its reviews.

However, “The way that they present it is… unethical,” said Cory Beal, owner of Floodway Print Company.

Beal has been getting emails from the online organization since 2021. At first, Best in Winnipeg told Beal it would add his business to a list of best printing services — if he included a link on his website.

He didn’t respond.

In 2022, he got an email notifying him Floodway had been named one of the best places for T-shirt printing in Winnipeg.

It was free — but if he could mention the listing on its website, “It would help us a lot,” reads an email from Best in Winnipeg.

Emails kept coming from a handful of different accounts linked to Best in Winnipeg, Beal said. (He forwarded to the Free Press several such interactions, dating from 2021 through January.)

In November, Beal responded to an email from Best in Winnipeg saying he’d again been listed among the best T-shirt printing shops in the city.

“We are interested in offering you to hold the top spot on our list,” website partnership specialist Nathan Matthews wrote in a Nov. 13 email.

Beal asked for more details and found he’d need to pay a “maintenance fee” to hold the No. 1 ranking.

When Beal questioned the fee, Matthews wrote Best in Winnipeg “will not pursue a firm that we do not believe is worthy of recommending to our audience.”

“We only offer the top spots for paid listings because they receive the largest share of the pie in terms of visitor engagements,” Matthews added.

Beal declined, stating he’d never “pay for a fake review/placement.”

In January, Best in Winnipeg sent another email to Beal, seeking to explore a “strategic partnership.”

It outlined a fee of $100 per month — 50 per cent off of the usual $200 monthly — for a No. 1 spot on a list. Ultimately, a top spot would cost Beal $1,200 a year, a Best in Winnipeg representative relayed.

They cited increasing costs of search engine optimization and webpage maintenance as reasons for prioritizing the “paid partnership program.”

Best in Winnipeg didn’t answer Free Press questions by print deadline Monday.

The website’s disclosure stated the organization “will never accept money in exchange for reviews,” as of Monday afternoon.

It’s 100 per cent reader supported, according to the disclosure.

Businesses with Best in Winnipeg No. 1 rankings the Free Press spoke to Monday said they hadn’t paid the list maker.

The owner of Strada Personal Spa — ranked No. 1 on the “Best Spas in Winnipeg” list — didn’t know about the website until a reporter called. The entrepreneur then searched her junk emails folder and found a Best in Winnipeg message asking her to pay to secure the spot.

Small businesses have enough costs without the website’s fee, she noted.

Susie Strachan, who’s listed as a contributing editor, said she hasn’t been involved with the website for years, despite Best in Winnipeg posting content this month bearing her name and photograph.

Strachan said she didn’t write the articles and never agreed to be an editor. She was contacted via Upwork, a freelancing platform, Strachan added.

“I’m going to have to go to Upwork and complain,” she said Monday. “Apparently, I wrote a ton.”

Best in Winnipeg advertises it’s been featured in the Free Press; it has not.

“(This) is an indication that you always need to ask why you should trust an online source,” said Matthew Johnson, director of education at MediaSmarts, a non-profit promoting digital and media literacy.

It’s hard to track how common such situations are, but this appears to be “an unusual case,” Johnson said.

“In some ways, it appears to be misleading both businesses and consumers,” he added, noting companies are being asked to pay for a website that might be of “limited value” to them.

In 2022, the Better Business Bureau cautioned against vanity awards, which include both paying a fee to enter a competition and being notified of a win without entering a contest.

If companies are paying for the website’s top spots, it could be defying Canada’s Competition Act, Johnson noted, underlining he’s not a legal expert.

The Competition Bureau is responsible for policing deceptive marketing practices, including false or misleading representations.

Floodway Print Company placed second on Best in Winnipeg’s list of best places for T-shirt printing; Beal said he’s not paying.

He has not received similar emails from any other organization, Beal added. However, his inbox is filled with spam.

“This is one of the challenges,” he said. “A lot of the emails we get are not customers, it’s stuff like this.”

Several Canadian cities have websites with similar layouts as Best in Winnipeg, including Best in Edmonton and Best in Ottawa.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com