Didn't Get That Wedding Gift? Blame The Search Engines!

Search engines are appearing to be indexing gift registries and ranking them well enough to be found by unsuspecting online consumers. This causes the registry to show that people have ordered an item or two that the bride and groom have never received. I wrote up the long-winded story here but let me explain in short.

1. I placed a link to my wedding registries from my wedding site.
2. Search engine found the link and indexed my gift registry pages.
3. Unsuspecting consumer searches for product ABC in a search engine.
4. Searcher is presented with several options including my registry.
5. They click over to my registry and find the product.
6. They order the product and ship it to their home.

The unsuspecting consumer has no idea that they ordered it from my registry; they just know they ordered it from XYZ Store.com. However, the registry now shows that the items that the unsuspecting customers purchased have been fulfilled and the “wedding party” no longer needs them. But we do need them!

Andy Beal says that these are not “fraudulent” orders, as I called them here but rather “unfortunate” orders. GrayWolf adds that he is aware of several wedding registry scams that we should be aware of.