Need to influence Google Suggest? Here's How!

• When potential visitors search for our business name in Google many times they are presented with Google auto-complete search suggestions that include things like our "Business Name Scams" and our "Business Name Bad Reviews" among other queries. This is unflattering to say the least. Is there ANYTHING we can do to influence what kind of suggestions Google serves?

Answer: Google search suggestions generated by Google Instant Autocomplete functionality is a routinely overlooked component of reputation management. Usually the returned results are fairly innocuous search suggestions. Other times they can be downright unflattering like this example of a recent Google Suggest returned for author Kevin Trudeau.

The truth of the matter is that Google "suggestions" like the ones above are substantially more than that since they tend to influence and direct user search habits to query paths they may have not otherwise been interested in pursuing.

First off, how does Google Suggest generate these? Well, it's pretty simple really: these are generated based on how people actually search. So in our example above, MULTIPLE people, all across the country, had to physically type in "Kevin Trudeau free money scam" for Google to return that as a suggested search in the example above. These suggestions are also influenced by your search location, whether or not you are logged-in to Google and engaging personalized search features, and most importantly, freshness.

We've covered the importance of Freshness with Google in the past and with the launch of Google Search Plus Your ...