Why Your Google Results Are Costing You Six Figures

Here's a number that should make you uncomfortable: a single negative result appearing in positions 3–5 of a branded search can reduce trust enough to drop deal conversion by 15–30%. That's not an estimate — that's a pattern documented across our client portfolio.

The position problem

Position 1 is almost always the company website. Position 2 is usually LinkedIn. But positions 3 through 10? That's where the story gets written without you. A Glassdoor review from a disgruntled employee. A Reddit thread from 2021. A press hit with a headline that aged badly. These are the results that quietly kill deals before anyone gets on a call.

“Nobody walks away from a promising deal and says "your Google results were the problem." They just go quiet. The feedback never comes — only the silence.”

Where the money actually goes

The cost isn't always a lost sale. Sometimes it's a VP-level candidate who accepts a competing offer. Sometimes it's a media outlet that passes on a story. Sometimes it's an LP who decides to hold off. The cost of a bad search result is diffuse and hard to measure — which is exactly why it goes unaddressed for so long.

• Deal conversion drops with 1+ negative results in top 5
• Executive recruiting pipelines shrink when search results are ambiguous
• Media coverage correlates with authority of search-visible content
• Partnership close rates are measurably lower when due diligence surfaces reputation issues

What the fix looks like

The good news: search results aren't permanent. They're a live ranking system that responds to inputs. We build those inputs systematically — authority content, strengthened owned assets, strategic amplification — until the story you want to tell is the one Google tells on your behalf.