Google has the power to influence what people think or believe about a person, business or brand, I believe it may also be possible to manipulate it to your own advantage.
Recently a friend contacted me, she was concerned that when searching for the name of the leader of her group negative phrases were being suggested by Google in their drop-down options, see below.
The search in question is for “Sri Sri Ravi Shankar”, but by the time you have typed “Sri Sri” into Google the drop-down options Google offers have suggested his full name, but the second suggestion offered by Google is “Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Fraud”.
This is disturbing, as far as I know Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is certainly not a fraud, he is anything but, however the suggestion Google is offering will cause searchers to form an opinion simply based on what they are suggesting as a possible search term.
I believe the suggestions are provided by Google based on what users have been searching for over a recent period of time, i’m not sure how long, it could be 30, 60 or 90 days, maybe more.
Is Google policing this? Probably not if it is happy for Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to be called a fraud! So, If the suggestions are purely based on what users are searching for then it would be easy to manipulate what appears in the drop-down suggestions by auto-generating huge numbers of searches for whatever phrase you wanted (and then making sure your site is top for that phrase, which will get loads of extra clicks by appearing in the drop-down suggestions).
If it really is that simple, the possibilities and potential (both good and bad) are huge.
What nobody seems to know is how to get a suggestion removed from the Google drop-down such as “Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Fraud”.

