In a successful campaign, a growing number of positive listings that assume the top rankings for the targeted keyword searches will force the Negative Piece progressively lower to the point where it gets relegated to the ”Siberia” of Search Engine rankings, also known as page three or lower. At this point, the percentage of searches that actually find the negative piece will be negligible. Additionally, studies have found that low ranked content carries less influence with searchers than listings found on the first and second page of search results.

One of the unanticipated benefits of these successful campaigns was that, by occupying a large percentage of the top 20 listings, the sponsoring company would basically control the search Engine results for potentially high value keywords, thus reducing the visibility of content developed by competing companies. Blocking the competition’s visibility in this manner carried the same effect as being the only company that could advertise during television’s prime time hours. A second benefit was that the occupation of the top rankings made the ascension of subsequently published negative content to the front of the search engine results pages far more difficult.

These Reputation Management benefits are now well-recognized for their value in terms of branding, marketing, and controlling the messaging related to businesses and their products. In fact, proactive reputation management, rather than being seen as an unfortunate expense, can now deliver a return on investment that rivals the profitability of marketing and advertising dollars.