Yes, they do.

Here is an excerpt from Google’s blog, where this issue is being discussed:

If you can’t get the content removed from the original site, you probably won’t be able to completely remove it from Google’s search results, either. Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business. If you can get stuff that you want people to see to outperform the stuff you don’t want them to see, you’ll be able to reduce the amount of harm that that negative or embarrassing content can do to your reputation.

This is the clearest endorsement I have ever seen from Google concerning a Search Engine Optimization matter. Sure they offer SEO advice, but often their advice can be interpreted one dozen ways.

I think that in this case, there is only one translation. Google does endorse pushing the positives up in the search results and the negatives down in the search results, in order to shield your online reputation from the negative effects of bad reviews or bad press.

Learn more about how we can help you manage your online reputation.

You know, if there are listings in Google’s search results that are hurting your business, you might think that there is nothing you can do about that. But let me assure you that given the will and the desire, there is plenty you can do about those search engine results that may be hurting your business.

So many people look at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a game of influencing the keywords that are important to their business, but they don’t realize that SEO can be used to diminish the negatives in the search results also.

Remember that guy who bought your product 3 years ago, and he did not follow the instructions for use, and then complained about how your product let him down? He could be hurting your business right now.

How do you measure the sales that your business is losing, because some guy complained on some website about how your product or service is “crap”.

Ah… I remember when I was selling TV’s for a living.

There was this fellow who came into the store and bought a 52-inch projection screen TV. We had a bonded delivery crew on hand to help people get their purchases home, but although this guy had just spent $2400 on a television set, he decided that he did not want to pay $40 for delivery of his new TV set. I bet you can see where this story is going…

So, we loaded his new TV in the back of his pickup, and he proceeded to tie down his TV in the back of his pickup truck.

He thanked us for his TV and started the drive home.

45 minutes later, our most recent happy customer pulled into the parking lot, toting a big-screen TV box.

As we went to meet him at the door, we could hear the glass falling as the box moved across the floor.

He was pissed! And to our surprise, we were at fault!

You might be asking yourself why we were at fault. That is a good question, one I even posed at the time.

We were at fault, because we did not offer free delivery!

A gust of wind had caught his box, snapping the twine that he had used to tie it down, blowing his $2400 Phillips Big-Screen TV onto the highway.

It was our fault, because we should have given him free delivery. Never mind that we had already given him a $300 discount on the purchase of his TV.

We had offered him bonded delivery, but he refused, and now it was our fault that his TV was broken.

The store where we worked was one of those chains that keep all of the power to make things right at the home office. We could not simply exchange his TV, without permission from our superiors. If we had authorized the exchange with the guy, without the District Manager’s permission, the company would have taken the cost of the Television out of the salesperson’s and the manager’s paycheck.

I was the assistant manager, and I was NOT going to pay for this guy’s broken television. The company did not pay me enough to fix this problem for them, out of my own pocket.

We called the DM. Of course, even though we worked until 10 at night, the DM went home at 6pm. So, we kept dialing his cell phone number, until he answered the phone.

He was pissed, but that was okay. We were already dealing with “pissed”, so we did not mind two people pissed at the same time.

Thank God I was not the manager in charge that night. Thank God for small favors…

Our District Manager said the guy was tough out of luck. I am glad I don’t work for those clowns anymore.

I agree that it should not have been our responsibility, but surely we could find a solution for this guy. After all, he just spent $2400 with us.

Nope. The District Manager said No, then he said No, and he said No again.

So, the DM hung up telling us not to call him again that evening. And we were left with the poor guy who had just signed a two-year finance contract on a TV that was busted to hell.

Yes, I bet the guy pays for delivery next time. But the story does not end here.

The story now moves online. It moves into the newspaper. It moves onto our sales floor for more than a week. It goes ballistic…

The customer went home that night, and turned to the power of the Internet with his complaint. A few days later, he followed his Internet complaints with a paid advert in the local newspaper. Our store was getting skewered.

The guy was in the store every day, throwing a tantrum. And he was spending his money and his time to skewer us for letting him make a foolish decision.

It just worked out well for him. On about his tenth trip to the store, throwing his daily tantrum in front of people who were looking to buy a TV, he just happened to arrive on a day that the DM was in the building. Ah… A new face behind the counter. The customer picked out the new face in the building as being someone over us. And wham, he let in.

Persistence paid off in this case.

He overwhelmed the District Manager with his complaints.

The District Manager broke down and did only what the District Manager could do for our customer. He used his privileged status to type in the appropriate commands into the computer and make things right for this guy.

In the end, we got him a new television for the price of delivery to his house.

The store ate the cost of the new television. (I ended up paying a portion of the TV anyway, because the bookkeeping department deducted the price of the television from the sales sheets for the month, so some of my monthly bonus was lost when that man’s television was cut from the store’s profits.)

The victory that we received was that the guy was not in the store every day scaring away our customers.

But that victory came only after we took a serious hit in our Reputation Management. Every person that guy talked to for the ten days after his purchase, up until he got his replacement, knew that he had a bad experience with us. What is more, everyone who read his paid advert in the newspaper knew that he had a problem with our store. Even more, who knows how long his complaint survived online…

You know what they say, “What is posted online, stays online.”

I left my job at that store in 2005. That store closed in 2008.

I am not going to say that the store closed on account of that guy’s complaints. But I am willing to say that the store was hurt by the guy’s complaints. He did manage to drive a lot of prospective customers out of our store, during his daily rants. (I just checked and could not find his complaints online anymore.)

I am willing to bet that the store closed due to the recession. It closed about the same time that Circuit City bit the dust.

I think this story clearly illustrates that a problem does not have to be your fault, in order for your business to pay a high price, as a result of the problem.

To help illustrate the extent of this problem, I just typed into Google the name of my favorite local restaurant, the name of my town, and the word “sucks”.

I saw dozens of Google search results that were in effect saying that my favorite restaurant “sucks”. Many of them went to describe this restaurant as having the “worst food ever.”

Wow!

Now to be sure, restaurants everywhere suffer from this treatment. And the big name brand restaurants can survive, because their customers have a different opinion.

But what if you are a local restaurant or an obscure internet company?

As an permanent online fixture, I tend to be jaded about the complaints I read about others. But I have to admit, while one or two complaints will not sway me, several complaints in the search results will even cause me to hesitate.

Can you afford for jaded internet marketers like myself to hesitate?

You can bet that if we” jaded internet marketers” are hesitating to purchase what you sell, those “who are not internet marketers by profession” are running away from you!

Fixing The Problem

You are already aware that by utilizing SEO techniques that you can help your website rank better for some keywords in Google and the other search engines.

But did you know that you can also create a wealth of positive reviews for your business on a variety of web pages, and to get those positive reviews to rank higher in the search engines than the negative reviews.

This is how we can help you.

We will use our SEO expertise to get the positive reviews of your website to outrank the negative reviews of your website. If we get enough positive reviews to occupy the top of the search results for your target keywords, then those negative reviews of your website will be buried on page two, three, four, five or six of Google’s search results.

If people will never see the negative reviews of your website, product or service, then as far as most people are aware, there are not any negative reviews.

If there are no negatives about your business, then everything is positive.

You are in control of your business’ reputation online, if only you are willing take the reins and force the negatives down in the search results.

We know that not everything in the search results is true or honest. After all, the guy with the broken TV was blaming us for his bad judgment. We know that you may not deserve what is in Google’s search results that is affecting your online reputation in a negative way.

Let us help you get the negatives out of the sight of your prospective customers. Because as long as those negatives exist in Google’s search results, there is a good chance that someone is going to let those negatives prevent them from buying from you!

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Let us Improve Your Online Reputation, by making the negatives disappear.

You never quite understand why people are willing to spend so much of their time chasing after you in the search engines to drive away your business.

Have you ever looked yourself up in the search engines? Have you seen search results that you are afraid could hurt your reputation and your business?

I have.

There are two fellows out there in America Land who share my name, Bill Platt.

• One is a car nut, who people swear is an @##&*!$. He is not me, but people swear that he is not a nice guy.
• Another is an upstanding member of the Republican Party, who said something really nasty about Obama during the 2008 campaign. I don’t know what he said, and I don’t care really.

The point is that there are two guys out there, who will turn up in the search engines if you search for my name. If I thought that there would be a problem with them being mixed up with me, then I would probably take action to get them out of the search results. But, I am fairly well established, and I don’t think anyone will confuse me with them.

In your case, things might be a bit different.

In your case, you might be turning up on the same page as someone being outed for being a crook. You might share a name with one of America’s Most Wanted. Here is an example:

I got on the idea for this type of service when a fellow contacted me to ask if I could help him combat his search engine troubles. He lives in Arizona, and he is getting mixed up with a guy in New York, who got in trouble with the Feds over a money scam.

It is bad enough in his case that his identity is being mixed up with a felon, but then one of his previous customers (a student at his school) got mad, because she got a diploma from his school and now she cannot find a job. As if that is the teachers fault, right?

So the student is thrashing out at the school, which gave her an education, because she cannot find a job.

Now the student is chasing the school around online, trying to connect the dean of the school to the felon in New York.

It does not matter that the connection is not true. It does not matter that the dean is seeking legal recourse in the matter.

What matters is that anytime someone finds the school, then wants to find out more about it, they generally drop the name of the school into Google, and viola, they are told that the school is operated by a felon who stole money from folks.

It is not the same guy, but it does not matter. It does not matter, because people can SEE THE LIE, and they have no reason not to BELIEVE THE LIE.

At the time I was approached about doing this, I was not in a position to help. So the fellow who called me had to find someone else to help him. (I received that call 2 years, before I started doing SEO.) This happened a long time ago, but the story tends to repeat itself online – all the time.

If people are typing your name or the name of your business into the search engines and seeing search listings that undermine your credibility, then you are losing sales.

This is how we can help you.

We can use our expertise in SEO to make the pages – that are undermining your ability to do business – disappear from the search results.

We do not employ any Blackhat SEO methods, to accomplish this end.

Instead, we seek out the positive mentions of your name or company, and then we use the SEO processes that work for us to push the positive reviews UP IN THE SEARCH ENGINES.

Because the positive reviews of you or your business are on the climb, it is just a matter of time, before the bad reviews start disappearing into lower pages in the search results.

If people cannot see any Negative Posts about you or your company, then those negatives will never enter the mind of your prospects. Out-Of-Sight … Out-Of-Mind.

If we cannot find any positive reviews of you or your company online, then we will create the positive reviews of you or your company, then we will push those new pages up in the search results to replace the negative press.

The process is all about Managing Your Reputation in the search engines.

When we are successful at improving the good press and pushing the bad press Out-Of-Sight, then you will be able to close more sales. It is as simple as that.

Let us help you Clean Your Online Reputation.

On the World Wide Web, you are NOT the only person trying to manage your online reputation.

I hate to say it, but disgruntled customers, disgruntled former employees, and dirty dog scoundrel competitors are also trying to manage your reputation for you.

You would think that some of your former employees would just get on with their lives, but one of my competitors has been dogged for years by a former employee, who went and purchased “business name” SUCKS.COM !!

This disgruntled employee is posting some of most vile, libelous statements that you can imagine.

Not only is he trying to trash the business, but he is also getting personal and dragging my friends’ girlfriend in the picture, claiming that my 40-something friend should be looked down upon for dating at 20-something lady. (If that were really bad, my dad and I both would be less than desirable. My wife is 10-years my junior, and my dad’s wife is 10-years his junior and 10-years my elder! )

I have talked to my friend at length about his former employee. He has chosen not to go the Reputation Management channel, but instead, he is building a portfolio for his coming lawsuit. (Good for him.)

My friend has been doing business online since 1995. He feels that his reputation is on strong enough ground to combat the perceived negative of a ranting lunatic trying to trash his business.

The Question Is: Are You Strong Enough To Overcome The Bad Press?

If your online reputation is not strong enough to combat the lunatic fringe, which is trying to destroy your business, then you really should consider employing a service like mine that will help you push the bad reviews out of Google’s Top10 Search Results, perhaps even out of the Top20 Search Results.

With a service like ours, our goal is to utilize our SEO prowess to push the bad reviews off of page one of Google’s search results, perhaps even off of page two of Google’s search results. If people cannot find bad reviews of your business, then the bad reviews do not exist.

Let us help you defeat those who are trying to reduce the impact of your business.

After all, your reputation matters.