It’s important to be in all the ‘neutral’ sites that we can, in the hope that these will push bad results on to the second page.
One of the eternal frustrations of being the person responsible for influencing a company’s ranking in search engine results is when a colleague spies a link we don’t want, such as a bad review, and says to us: “Can’t you get rid of that?”
Unfortunately, unless we can get the offending website taken down, the answer is no.
The best strategy is to generate more positive results to push the negative one further down the search rankings. This has recently become easier on Google, which has returned to using ‘paged’ results. Anything below position number 10 now appears on the second page, where it’s less likely to be seen accidentally.
The second page graveyard
While the exact percentage of clicks each position on Google receives is debated, it’s generally agreed that the number one result captures 30–40% of clicks, while the tenth position gets just 2.5%. Fewer than a quarter of searchers even look at the second page, and those who do are typically more dedicated searchers — not the casual ones we’re hoping won’t see the negative result.
The worst-case scenario is when a negative result appears on the first page for a search on the company name. This is why it’s crucial to be listed in as many directories and neutral sites as possible, hoping they will rank strongly and prevent any issues. I’ve even seen companies push negative results off the first page by consistently publishing news stories on their local newspaper’s website.