1 Chapter 01
The situation
The company sells to doctors and clinic owners, a buying community that is small, connected and careful. Prospects search the brand name before every demo, and for months the results they found were not the company's own.
The most damaging page was a standalone website presented as a legal action against the company, with a petition page inviting visitors to sign up and share their details. Around it sat a review-directory profile the company had never claimed, showing a low rating, and several forum threads in practitioner communities asking whether the company could be trusted.
Together they turned a routine due-diligence search into a reason to cancel a call.
2 Chapter 02
What we agreed to work on
We audited everything ranking for the brand, then agreed a fixed schedule of 10 links with the client. Each link was scoped on its own, with an honest view of which were realistic and which were long shots, before any work started.
Some pages were left off the schedule on purpose. Where acting on a thread risked drawing more attention to it than it was getting, we said so and recommended leaving it alone.
3 Chapter 03
The outcome
The directory profile was removed at source the same day work began. The "lawsuit" website and its petition page went offline within four weeks. Two of the forum threads were also removed.
That is 5 of the 10 scheduled links cleared in the first month, including the two pages that did the most harm. The remaining links, mostly complaint-board pages, are still being worked, and the client is updated on each one as it moves.
✓ Chapter 04
What this shows B2B companies
In a niche market, a single hostile website can do more damage than hundreds of reviews, because every serious buyer finds it. It is also often more removable than it looks.
If a page is pretending to be something it is not, such as a legal action, a news report or an official notice, that is worth raising early. Book a free Exposure Scan and we will tell you plainly which of your results can realistically come down.
