Marcus Rowe
Head of Strategy, Serply
Most brands panic. The right move is counterintuitive — and it has nothing to do with issuing a statement.
A negative press hit lands. Your first instinct is to respond, correct the record, issue a statement. Nine times out of ten, that instinct makes it worse.
The amplification trap
Every time you respond publicly to negative coverage, you do two things: you signal that the story has enough merit to warrant a response, and you create additional indexed content that links back to the original piece. You've just given Google more reasons to keep ranking it.
“The worst thing you can do with a negative press result is feed it. Engagement — even combative engagement — is a ranking signal. Silence, paired with a content offensive, is almost always the better play.”
What to do instead
- Audit the full SERP for your name immediately — understand what else ranks
- Identify owned and near-owned assets that can be strengthened to outrank the hit
- Begin a content offensive on adjacent and related topics that establish counter-narrative
- Build new backlink equity to positive assets — don't try to remove links from the negative piece
- If the coverage contains factual errors, engage legal — not PR
The timeline
Search suppression is not instant. A well-executed content strategy can displace a negative result from the first page in 60–120 days. The earlier you start, the faster it works. Waiting for it to "blow over" is not a strategy — it's hope, and hope doesn't rank.
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