Company wants damaging articles pushed back on Google. Any ideas on best way to do this?

by Sirr
17 replies
  • SEO
  • |
A company contacted me yesterday to ask if it's possible to mask negative results from Google searches related to keywords their customer would use to search.

The company has a good few sites set up by a competitor that are looking to damage their reputation. The competitor has set up numerous sites, written articles on various web 2.0 sites and it looks like their efforts are having a negative effect on the company that contacted me.

The competitor is unknown. They leave no trace on who they are and no links to the competitors brand are included in any of the sites that damage the companies reputation.

The company have a hunch, as there's only 3 companies who provide these services in the UK. But proving it is another matter. The company just wants these damaging articles gone from the customers view.

So, what's the best way to push these results back? Has anyone had any experience doing this. I've never actually done it, but I'd imagine it would involve the same type of efforts (or more) to counteract the bad press.

Any advice would be great here.
#articles #back #company #damaging #google #ideas #pushed
  • Profile picture of the author carlo_sim
    I believe that the best way is to out rank the articles that are ranking in google using your own websites. Hope this helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author Sirr
      Originally Posted by carlo_sim View Post

      I believe that the best way is to out rank the articles that are ranking in google using your own websites. Hope this helps.
      Thanks Carlo.

      They did state they didn't want to have to use their own site to justify the claims that are being made as they're entirely false. And given that there's a good number of pages out there set up I think it'd take more than a handful of articles to clear the listings.

      The company is #1 on the Google search for the main keyword in their niche, but the number #3 spot is a damaging article against the company. Looking at the stats it'd be very easy to outrank that article, but even if it was outranked with 1 or 2 articles from the customers main site it's still going to appear further down the listing.

      If you get what I mean.
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    • Profile picture of the author StanHyeck
      Originally Posted by carlo_sim View Post

      I believe that the best way is to out rank the articles that are ranking in google using your own websites. Hope this helps.
      Actually you want t go farther than this.

      Use your website, youtube, Google+, squidoo, linkedin, and so on. Put A LOT of things from a lot of different sites and rank them all.

      Now I have to tell you that the best time to start "reputation management" (which is what you're doing for your client) is BEFORE there's anything to worry about.

      It's easier to get stuff ranked and simply keep it there above anything negative than it is to try and beat out other stuff.

      Let me HIGHLY recommend that you look at creating a PBN (if you don't know what that is PM me) as part of this process to help those various pages rank well.

      Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author rrram2
    Originally Posted by Sirr View Post

    A company contacted me yesterday to ask if it's possible to mask negative results from Google searches related to keywords their customer would use to search.
    not possible I dont think, if you figure it out let me know

    Originally Posted by Sirr View Post

    The company has a good few sites set up by a competitor that are looking to damage their reputation. The competitor has set up numerous sites, written articles on various web 2.0 sites and it looks like their efforts are having a negative effect on the company that contacted me.
    I doubt it is a competitor, it is more likely an unhappy customer.

    Originally Posted by Sirr View Post

    The competitor is unknown. They leave no trace on who they are and no links to the competitors brand are included in any of the sites that damage the companies reputation.
    which all the more begs to suggest that it isnt a competitor

    Originally Posted by Sirr View Post

    The company have a hunch, as there's only 3 companies who provide these services in the UK. But proving it is another matter. The company just wants these damaging articles gone from the customers view.
    There are ways to get the articles removed, by contacting the websites they are on, and depending on the content, may I suggest you communicate with the damaging websites uplinks (ISP)

    Originally Posted by Sirr View Post

    So, what's the best way to push these results back? Has anyone had any experience doing this. I've never actually done it, but I'd imagine it would involve the same type of efforts (or more) to counteract the bad press.

    Any advice would be great here.
    its like a glass full or water and the water is the bad articles, you have to keep adding articles to the water which act like rocks displacing the negative articles, once you have enough good new articles published on all sorts of different sites, it should knock the bad articles down, but what you have to do is beat the bad article poster at his own game by having your articles outrank on SERP's thus knocking them down further.

    It has been proven that a huge percentage of people searching on google never get off the first page, focus on the top ten results and let the rest grow old.

    of course if it someone talented running an online marketing campaign against the company requesting your help, then its just going to be an ongoing war until they stop or until you become smarter and faster than them.

    I have ran several online marketing campaigns against websites who have dealt with others in an unfair way, if a website or internet user that sells me something defrauds me, then it is on. I am not anonymous either, screw people over and I am going to scream about it loudly all over the internet, perhaps your potential client/customer has screwed over some of their customers and they finally screwed one over, that is going to make them pay (in lost business). This is the most likely thing especially if the articles seem to have no trace to the author & dont pooint to competitor websites.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sirr
    Interesting. I can't comment on the business practices of the company, but a Google search revealed that there's nobody who has been "ripped off". I can't really find any bad press on that front. Although when I spoke to the owner of the company he seemed genuinely upset by what's being done. Something strikes me as this isn't an unhappy customer.

    It looks like the campaign has been set up to put people off using the company, and some suggestions state that there are "alternative companies" to use in the article but no links. It could very well be that the company behind this (if it is a company) are trying to put people off using that company and to search for an alternative. The competitor is #2. The 3rd company in this niche is on page 2, so their SEO efforts are poor anyway so I highly doubt it would be them.

    Something strikes me as it being company #2. Even the owner suggested this before I even had a chance to look at anything.

    Plus, I can't imagine any of their customers being involved in SEO. They are two worlds apart. Of course I could be very wrong, but so far it does add up to it being #2.
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    • Profile picture of the author Dani78
      The way to do that, is to cram the first page for its name
      and related keywords with pages that are positive.

      Experts on seo may be able to do it, that's one famous
      mlm company did so all the negative press didn't show
      on first page.

      The bad press will not disappear, only pushed down.

      Also, if it's not just a competitor issue (and bad press
      keeps coming) it may or may not work long term.
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  • Profile picture of the author barbling
    If you're after sheer rankings, have you company create and upload a Google Hangout every day. You can do hangouts with an audience of one - I used t to that all the time.

    Google gives preference to anything on their properties (ie, GooglePlus). Make sure to include keywords in the title of the hangout (ie, presented by Business Name) and mention the title several times during the broadcast (as Google automatically adds closed captioning).

    On the site itself (if it's using WP), create a category that has nice keywords, plus, say, "resources", "news", "tutorials", etc. Make sure your Google Hangouts thingee is set to that particular category.

    Thus, after 5 days, you should have a 5 day tutorial, each listed the company's Google+ page, each uploaded to your site, each linked to other social media properties, etc.etc.etc.

    'Twill go a *long* way to building regaining SEO.

    Hope that helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author ADVERTHEORY
    Check your local laws for libel defamination. Then the next question will be " is it worth pursuing?"
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  • Profile picture of the author StanHyeck
    Playing REALLY dirty.

    You mentioned that your client thought that this was potentially a competitor doing this.

    You can absolutely CRUSH this from happening by finding some company that will send out 20 million spam emails that all have an add that looks like it's for the competition.

    The spam complaints will get their servers turned off.

    Now this really is a sort of "scorched earth" method of getting competition to stop, but then I take a real dim view of people doing unethical crap like B.S. articles and link attacks against my clients so in my opinion it's what they get.
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    • Profile picture of the author taxtorpedo
      There is a simple cure, but I'm not sure of the
      ethics of the tactic.

      If you are talking about search engine results with
      Google here is what to do.

      (1)Create a flood of spammy links to the offending
      articles.

      (2)Buy some paid links to the offending articles' urls.

      (3)Once the above are in place notify Google of same.

      (4)The original offending and abusive critical links
      should be punished by Google IF there is any JUSTICE
      in the SEO universe.

      A very big IF!?!

      The ethical question to be considered is whether or not
      we want to make negative SEO a routine part of our
      marketing tactics when we encounter abuse????

      What does everyone think about the ethics of this remedy?
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      • Profile picture of the author Andrew S
        Parasite SEO is the name of the game here. Social profiles, youtube/vimeo videos, etc... Update these with content once in a while and push links at them.

        Originally Posted by taxtorpedo View Post

        (1)Create a flood of spammy links to the offending
        articles.

        (2)Buy some paid links to the offending articles' urls.
        You're more than likely to push them up with this.
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        • Profile picture of the author taxtorpedo
          Originally Posted by Andrew S View Post

          Parasite SEO is the name of the game here. Social profiles, youtube/vimeo videos, etc... Update these with content once in a while and push links at them.



          You're more than likely to push them up with this.
          Andrew:The key part of the strategy is to NOTIFY GOOGLE.
          It claims to be always on the lookout for PAID LINKS. It has
          a long and verified history of punishing paid (especially dofollow)
          links.

          In addition once the paid links are identified to Google, they can
          easily uncover the additional spammy links. Slam dunk! Rankings
          take a dive.

          Negative SEO works against us legitimate Internet marketers.
          Why wouldn't it work against devious, sinister, negative SEO
          tactics?
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          • Profile picture of the author Andrew S
            Originally Posted by taxtorpedo View Post

            Andrew:The key part of the strategy is to NOTIFY GOOGLE.
            It claims to be always on the lookout for PAID LINKS. It has
            a long and verified history of punishing paid (especially dofollow)
            links.

            In addition once the paid links are identified to Google, they can
            easily uncover the additional spammy links. Slam dunk! Rankings
            take a dive.

            Negative SEO works against us legitimate Internet marketers.
            Why wouldn't it work against devious, sinister, negative SEO
            tactics?
            It's a good theory.

            Domesticating Google is a more difficult in practice.
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  • Profile picture of the author humbledmarket
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Sirr View Post

    A company contacted me yesterday to ask if it's possible to mask negative results from Google searches related to keywords their customer would use to search.

    The company has a good few sites set up by a competitor that are looking to damage their reputation. The competitor has set up numerous sites, written articles on various web 2.0 sites and it looks like their efforts are having a negative effect on the company that contacted me.

    The competitor is unknown. They leave no trace on who they are and no links to the competitors brand are included in any of the sites that damage the companies reputation.

    The company have a hunch, as there's only 3 companies who provide these services in the UK. But proving it is another matter. The company just wants these damaging articles gone from the customers view.

    So, what's the best way to push these results back? Has anyone had any experience doing this. I've never actually done it, but I'd imagine it would involve the same type of efforts (or more) to counteract the bad press.

    Any advice would be great here.
    Bring up those that you want to the first page would be the best option; few users will search past the 1st page.

    Doing this you can cherry pick what your client wants to see on the first page anyways. It'll be a lot of work though I'd assume they would be willing to invest the adequate capital to protect their search terms for situations like this.

    This seems like an excellent opportune client; typically for these kind of projects we want to validate first that those posts are not legitimate (there's really no point working on their brand image if their service is the issue as it'll only arise after some time and there's also ethics). Although for something like this situation, a competitor can only do so much and it'd be great for the client as they can see immediate results to their investment (Better company image => likely means more conversion and customers) so they'd be willing to pay more and re-invest if you can do it well.
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  • Profile picture of the author PBScott
    Common practice is to outrank the negative articles with the same keywords in several articles, which essentially buries the negative review in results.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sam Zachuth
    Best thing to do is, to bury the links with better properties. Facebook, youtube, etc work well. Do more articles in the same places, forum posts, anything like that will work well.
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  • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
    I don't know about the law around there, but in Finland at least you can't hinder other person's livelihood by publishing false information. If the claims are truthful that's another matter. If the laws support your cause you might want to file a police report. They've got much more authority to discuss with operators and webhosts, and ask for metadata about the perpetrators. In the worst case this route will just not get you anywhere.

    If those articles are on servers that are abroad then it's much harder to get them down. In that case a polite letter to the host in question may be your best bet, but it might just not get you anywhere either.

    Flooding the first results page should not be too hard in this case. Set up social media profiles and link them from your site, write good articles, and try to score some press hits.
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    Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
    Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

    What's your excuse?
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