Live by the search engines, die by the search engines.

Not too long ago, if you went into Google and searched for the keyword “toyota”, you’d be presented with the corporate website (toyota.com), a bunch of ads for Toyota dealerships (and perhaps some competitors), and some news articles, likely praising Toyota for their efficiency, their innovation, anything that would solidify them as the world’s top automotive manufacturer.

How times have changed.  This morning, the top ad in the sponsored links carries the headline “Toyota Recall.”  There are news results criticizing Toyota’s lack of transparency in dealing with the issues.  Further down the page, real-time search results refurbish other detrimental news items, sprinkled with negative commentary in very plain, consumer-generated language (i.e., a euphemism for the creative ways in which consumers voice their discontent for a product or service).  Quite simply, the search engine results pages lately aren’t such a beacon of Toyota’s market dominance.

On Friday, Web Liquid issued the 2010 Customer Complaint Index, where we frame this transgression in a bigger discussion of tactical marketing.  As search engine marketing has evolved, and with that evolution pushed towards greater saturation of ad dollars, finding focused audiences — and standing out in their eyes — has become more and more difficult.  What the Index finds is that attaching a brand name to the keyword “customer complaints” presents an opportunity for marketers on two fronts:

1) When negative attention (such as customer complaints) is drawn to our competitors, participation in that dialogue can deliver immense value.  As Woody Allen famously said, 80% of success is simply showing up.

2) When negative attention is instead focused on our brands, presence in that forum, and ownership of that dialogue will always pay off over ambivalence.

The goal is to take advantage of this digital marketing opportunity that is intimately tied to customer service.  If a competitor fails, the marketer has a golden opportunity to step in and save the day.  If it’s their own product or service that fails, they can still leverage the situation for data capture, opening a powerful remarketing channel for when the problem is resolved.

While Nissan, McDonald’s and Hewlett-Packard topped the list in terms of absolute monthly search queries related to customer complaints, there is one brand which leads the pack in terms of the relative share of complaints to total branded queries — by a wide margin.  A hint: it’s another automotive brand.  Another hint: it’s not Toyota.

To see which brand has earned this dubious honor, have a look at the 2010 Customer Complaint Index.