Push Down Negative Search Results

Negative search results are any web page in the search results that give out negative and, in some cases, false information about a company or individual. These negative search results can be damaging to whomever they are aimed at and as such should be dealt with as soon as possible so that they can be pushed down and replaced with positive content. This is because negative search results can lead to damage of a person’s or company’s reputation which could potentially lead to large financial losses and also a loss of trust from customers for a business.

Removing Negative Results Permanently

This is quite a rarity when it comes to people damaging a company’s reputation but it can be successful, especially for individuals who don’t want something of themselves being posted online. One thing to note before attempting a removal request on a site is that it can have drawbacks and will only really work if certain criteria is met. First of all, if an individual is in control of the negative content or if it is something they posted, whether it be recently or in the past, they should remove the content and release a statement of apology or at least address the situation. If somebody who knows another posts something about them they may remove it if asked. Also, an individual living in the EU or Argentina can check to see if the content written about them fits the standards of removal based on Google’s Right to be Forgotten policy.

An important note to remember is that even if somebody fits the criteria, the negative content is archived. Even if someone is lucky enough to have their content removed by emailing the site owner directly or by legal means the content could still be archived meaning that it will continue to show up when said individual or company name is searched. This is why we try bury these results rather than try and remove them as it could be expensive to do through legal means and moving the results past the first page would mean less people will see it than if it was archived.

An individual or company should ensure that if they are wanting to take action on a site and have content removed that they are not an anonymous attacker. If they are anonymous, it may be hard to get in touch with them and ask them to take down the content in question. Also, if this individual has it out for a person or company then contacting them could make it worse so it is best to stick to pushing down negative content in these circumstances. The same applies for content found on government websites and news outlets as it is more than likely that the removal claim will have now power at all. If it is a government website or news outlet that the content is found on it could be a good idea to call and ask for it to be removed but don’t expect it to work. A final thing to note is that if the negative content isn’t in the right category for the Right to be Forgotten law then it is highly unlikely that Google or whatever search engine is being used to de-index the content.

Pushing Down Negative Search Results

There are plenty of websites that consistently appear high in the search results such as social media platforms like Facebook and other such sites like Tripadvisor and Amazon etc. so creating and managing a public profile on as many of these sites as possible will help to push down negative results. When setting up profiles it is key to ensure that the privacy settings of each account are set to be publicly viewed and it is even more of a priority that the content that is posted on the sites will not have a further negative effect.

What should also be done alongside this is commenting publicly on forums, social media and other platforms so that these discussions will start to show up and push the negative content even further down. These types of posts don’t usually rank as highly as others but as long as the comments made are kept to a civil and non-negative standard they will do their part. Real names and company names should be used so that these discussions show up when someone is searching specifically for a company or individual. Remember that anything that is online may show up on Google or other search engines so it is important to ensure that the posts are intelligent, spelt correctly, well punctuated and are not too biased and are not offensive in any way. It is also advised that an individual or company should express themselves in the area that they want to become established in and that is most relevant to them.

One way in which Google determines site ranks is by monitoring how many other individual sites link to it. To push positive content up a company or individual could make relevant websites and link to it themselves. This could be done through social media too by including links to any websites or other social media accounts to positive content.

Another method to push down negative results is to remove negative keywords that are keeping them up. If an individual was to search for their name and have positive results show up, then search again with another keyword added in, something that may be relevant to them so others may use in a search, and the results are negative there are ways to fix this. If this is the case, the bad keyword must be identified and then used more and incorporated into the positive content that is being posted so that Google can start showing more positive results associated with the keyword.