Have you ever paid any serious attention to Google’s Autocomplete function? That’s the built in algorithm that suggests additional keywords as you begin to type a search into the box. Picture this: you begin to type in the name of a company that you want product or service information on, and the Autocomplete function adds the words ‘scam’ or ‘complaint’ to your search terms. Of course, if you are a potential client doing shopping research online, you are going to go ahead and click on that search string. It’s quite alarming to be greeted with those types of suggestions when you are looking to purchase something from a given company. It’s even more alarming if you are that company.

Google Autocomplete ‘management’ is the latest thing to rock the SEO and ORM (Online Reputation Management) worlds. It’s a subtle aspect of your company’s branding but it can have devastating effects. Without knowing too much about how Google works, the average user will assume that it is adding negative search terms to your company name because there are many websites that feature negative reviews and discussions about it, or that many people are concerned and searching for these terms together.

In fact, it looks like they wouldn’t be far off. This article on Searchengineland.com outlines what they believe goes into Google’s Autocomplete algorithm, based on a huge volume of collected data. They narrowed it down to three main points:

  • Search volume and location – the amount of searches performed for a given keyword combined with the location of the searchers
  • Instances of the keyword on websites that are crawlable by Google
  • Instances of the keyword on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

Essentially, you could potentially affect Google Autocomplete by working against the negative keywords across these algorithmic variables. This is a process that involves a lot of time, effort and expertise to achieve. Large volumes of keywords need to be dealt with, and the right websites and social networks need to be addressed in order to effect change with respect to these search terms. The Blue Hat SEO services team strives to stay ahead of these developments and refine strategies that protect clients’ reputation in an effective and efficient way. This is a campaign that requires ongoing dedicated service that is intelligent, powerful and well-tested –precisely the type of work Blue Hat specializes in.