The other day, a certain company president came to me with this question.

"Recently, when you search for my company name on Yahoo!, the search suggestions have started showing '○○ (the president's company name) fraudulent'... What should I do about it?"

…That was his question.

I can't write about the specifics of that company's services here, but they provide information services aimed at general consumers.
So what happens if the suggestion "fraudulent" keeps showing up? It's not hard to imagine prospective customers forming a negative impression when they search.

That could hurt the number of inquiries, and it's entirely possible it would damage revenue as well.
You can certainly understand why the president was worried, right?

For the record, this president's company conducts its business with great integrity. That's clear from the fact that when I actually searched for "○○ (the client's company name) fraudulent," I couldn't find a single article saying anyone had been harmed or had a bad experience with the company, and the same was true of discussions on social media such as Twitter searches.

So why did such an unfounded search suggestion (○○ fraudulent) appear? And more importantly, what should you do if it happens to you?
Let me explain right away. But first, you need to understand how search engines (Yahoo! and Google) work. Let's start there with a simple explanation.

How search suggestions (the Suggest feature) work

Search suggestions, i.e. the Suggest feature, is a function in which, when a user enters a keyword, the search engine presents combinations along the lines of "people who searched for the same keyword also used these keywords." You can tell as much from the meaning of "suggest" itself — to hint or imply.

In other words, it appears that words included in searches made by past users beyond a certain number of times are displayed as suggestions (this has not been officially announced by Yahoo!).

Specifically, Yahoo! seems to follow the rules below.

1. Number of searches

As mentioned earlier, once a keyword has been searched a certain number of times, it starts appearing in the suggestions. With Yahoo!, however, clicking the link for a suggested search phrase doesn't necessarily mean there are actually related pages.

This is in fact the big difference from Google. Google also has a suggest feature that works in a very similar way, but suggestions only appear when pages containing the search keyword actually exist.

Why does Yahoo! show suggestions even when no such page exists? Of course, Yahoo! hasn't announced anything, so we can't know the exact reason. Personally, I suspect the aim is to display keywords that have become talking points on TV or social media as suggestions first, thereby encouraging affiliate marketers, bloggers and others to create more related pages.

2. Update frequency

Suggestions appear to be updated at a frequency of "about once or twice a day." That said, I don't think every keyword is updated at the same frequency. So-called hot keywords, the kind that get talked about on TV or social media, are probably updated more often, while keywords with low search volume to begin with likely have longer intervals between suggestion updates.
Why do I think so? I'll explain the reason later.

3. Spam filters

Spam mainly refers to things sent indiscriminately and in large volumes, like junk email, but in recent years the term has also come to be used for acts that intentionally manipulate search results.
It's believed that both Yahoo! and Google exclude keywords that have been searched an abnormal number of times in a short period from the suggestion candidates, so that suggestions aren't affected by arbitrary manipulation by third parties.

Causes and countermeasures

Now, here's the heart of the matter.

About the cause of this particular case

In this case, the suggestion appeared only in Yahoo! searches. It did not appear on Google.
As touched on earlier in the explanation of how the suggest feature works in search engines, this means that even when no page exists stating that "Company ○○ is fraudulent," the suggestion can still appear on Yahoo!.

So what does that mean?
The most likely explanation is, quite simply, that "a third party intentionally searched for (○○ fraudulent)."

In fact, in this case, around the very same time the suggestion started appearing on Yahoo!, the president reportedly received a sales call like this.

"Sir, when you search for your company name, the word (fraudulent) comes up! This will damage your corporate image.
You need to do something about it right away, don't you agree?! But rest assured.
Our company specializes in dealing with online reputation damage. Shall we prepare a quote for you right now?"

…A sales call coming in with such "perfect timing"…
………
…………(It was you lot, wasn't it!! You self-serving b*stards.)
The president didn't say that, but honestly, that's what I thought (laughs).

Well, setting aside who did it, if you think about how it was done based on the way suggestions work as explained earlier… you've already figured it out, right?
They must have searched (company name + fraudulent) on Yahoo! over and over.
Searching many times from the same PC on the same network might be flagged as spam, so they probably searched from multiple network environments.
In fact, it can easily be done using the smartphones we all have in our hands. Why?
With a smartphone, the base station picking up the signal changes depending on where the user is. When the base station changes, the network changes too, and you're judged to be a different user. (On top of that, they may also be deleting cookies with each search.)
In that way, by using multiple people or bots to "make it look like searches increased naturally," it is probably possible to get "fraudulent" to show up in the suggestions.
If a complete stranger really did that to you… it would make your blood boil, wouldn't it?
But the important thing here is to "understand that such a mechanism exists."

And don't worry! I'm now going to introduce what to do if this happens to your company. Free of charge, of course (laughs).

What to do when "company name + bad reputation" appears in the suggestions

The countermeasure is actually not difficult. You simply submit a removal request using the [Yahoo! Search - Information Submission Form for Related Search Terms].
Let me walk you through the request procedure I actually followed until the term was removed, with screenshots.

1. Access the Yahoo! Search - Information Submission Form for Related Search Terms

Access the Yahoo! Search - Information Submission Form for Related Search Terms and click Next.

2. Fill in the required fields on the form

※URL of the search results page 1
※Related search term 1
※Details
Fill in the required fields. If necessary, add more URLs, related search terms and details.
Once you've filled everything in, click Next.

For reference, let me include the text of the details I submitted this time.
I can't guarantee that this will definitely get the term removed, but feel free to use it if you need to.

To the Yahoo! Search team

We operate a ○○ (type of business) called "○○ (company name)" in ○○ City, Shizuoka Prefecture.
For the search phrase "○○ (site name)," which is what brings visitors to our website, the suggestion "○○ (company name) fraudulent" has begun to appear.

This suggestion started appearing around the end of 2017, and at around the same time we have repeatedly been receiving sales calls from a company claiming to be an "online reputation damage removal provider," offering to remove it for a fee.
My personal impression is that this provider may have deliberately engineered the "bad reputation" suggestion to appear.

In fact, there is no page anywhere—neither on our own website nor on any other site—containing any such statement as "○○ (the problematic keyword)."
Setting aside the question of who searched using this phrase, ours is the only business in this area operating under the name "○○ (company name)."
That being the case, we are concerned that this will lead to serious damage to our brand image.
As you will see if you check, no such articles actually exist at all!

We are sorry for the trouble, but we would be grateful if you could check again and, if you find that the suggestion is objectively not based on fact, remove the search suggestion in question.

3. The confirmation screen appears → Submit

Check the content, and once you've confirmed there are no errors, click Submit.

When I followed this procedure, the term had been successfully removed from the suggestions the day after I submitted the request. What a relief!

Points to note

How did you find it?
Once you understand how it works and what to do about it, it's perfectly possible to handle it yourself with ease.
There's absolutely no need to pay money to some dubious "online reputation damage removal service."

That said, there is one point I have to add.
This time the blatantly obvious search keyword "company name + bad reputation" was removed right away, but that doesn't mean every "inconvenient search keyword" will be removed for you.
In particular, if there are actual blog posts, comments, or web pages that contain the "inconvenient search keyword," I think it will be very difficult.
At the very least, before making a request you will need to ask the administrator of the page in question to delete it.

Critical comments often found in reviews of restaurants, salons and the like fall into this category. There is also the possibility that negative articles will be written about you on blogs and elsewhere.
In such cases, you should keep in the back of your mind that a certain amount has to be accepted as within tolerable limits.

Finally, there is also a technique for turning negative search keywords to your advantage in branding. I introduced it in an article I wrote previously, "Why you should deliberately put negative words in your titles."
Please take a look at that too if you're interested.