How to manage bad reviews of your product

When a prospect searches for “[your product] reviews” or asks ChatGPT whether your product is any good, your homepage is rarely what shapes their first impression.

It is often an abandoned G2 profile, a three-year-old Reddit thread, or a comparison page written by a competitor.

That made me think about reputation ownership.

Would you create a transparent, brand-owned reviews hub that includes real customer reviews, real names and dates where permitted, links to original sources, criticism, and what the team did to address it?

Not a page that hides the bad stuff. A page that gives the full context and becomes one credible source in the conversation.

Some founders are now buying exact-match domains such as [yourcompany-reviews. com]to own that query. I am not convinced that is the best approach. A well-built /reviews page on the main domain may be more trustworthy.

Is this smart reputation management, or does it cross into trying to manipulate search results?