New study of 100 CEO reputation crises finds negative press can reshape google results for years

A corporate crisis can disappear from the news cycle in days. Its impact on Google may last for years.

That is one of the central findings of new research from Scott Keever, founder and CEO of Reputation Pros, examining the search histories of executives connected to 100 major corporate reputation crises between 2015 and 2026.

The study analyzed how negative press changed first-page Google results for CEOs and senior executives before and after major news events. Researchers examined the first 10 organic results associated with executive names across multiple observation periods, beginning before the initial negative coverage and extending as far as two years or more after the event.

The results suggest that the lasting consequences of a corporate crisis increasingly extend beyond traditional media coverage.

According to the study, negative press reached Google's first page within three to five days in 82 percent of the cases examined.

Within one week, 63 percent of previously visible positive or neutral URLs had been displaced from Page 1.

Perhaps more significantly, 41 percent of negative results observed at the 90-day point were still present two years or more later.

For executives whose credibility can influence investment decisions, employment opportunities, acquisitions and business partnerships, Keever believes that persistence deserves more attention.

"The news cycle ends. The search cycle often doesn't," Keever said. "Someone researching an executive two years later can encounter a controversy as though it happened yesterday."

Keever has spent more than a decade working in search engine optimization and online reputation management. He founded Keever SEO in 2015 and later founded Reputation Pros, a firm focused on online reputation management.

His research grew out of a recurring question encountered in reputation work: what actually happens to an executive's search results after a major negative story breaks?

To investigate it systematically, the study established six observation windows ranging from 30 to 90 days before a negative event through the current search environment.

Cases were required to involve CEOs, founder-CEOs, executive chairs or recently departed chief executives whose names were materially connected to negative coverage.

Each case also required reporting from at least three established independent news organizations.

Researchers classified the first 10 organic Google results associated with each executive as positive, neutral, mixed or negative. They also tracked the ownership of each result, its ranking position, persistence and source type.

The dataset included executives across technology, finance, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, transportation, media, energy and other industries.

The largest groups came from technology and financial services, representing 32 percent and 20 percent of the sample respectively.

One of the more consequential findings concerns what Keever calls the "displacement effect."

When major negative coverage begins ranking, it does not simply add unfavorable information to an otherwise unchanged search page.

Before a crisis, an executive's first page might contain a corporate biography, LinkedIn profile, interviews, conference appearances, previous news coverage and other neutral or positive material.

After a major news event, high-authority publishers can quickly occupy several of those positions.

The study found that an average of 63 percent of previously visible positive and neutral URLs were displaced from Page 1 within the first week.

The average share of negative first-page results climbed to 61 percent during that period.

That effectively changes the information environment surrounding an executive.

A person researching the CEO before the event and another person searching the same name a week later can encounter two dramatically different versions of the same individual.

The study's longitudinal findings may be even more important.

At 90 days, 78 percent of negative results appearing during the initial crisis period remained visible.

At 12 months, 52 percent of the negative results observed at 90 days remained.

At two years or longer, 41 percent were still present.

The findings challenge the assumption that unfavorable coverage naturally disappears once public attention moves elsewhere.

Instead, authoritative news articles can become durable components of an executive's digital identity.

This creates an unusual asymmetry.

News organizations naturally move on to newer stories. Search engines, however, can continue presenting older coverage whenever it remains relevant to a person's name.

"People tend to think about reputation crises chronologically," Keever said. "Search engines don't experience time the way people do. If an authoritative article remains highly relevant to a name, it can continue appearing long after public attention has moved on."

The research also categorized the 100 cases by the underlying nature of the negative coverage.

Financial or fraud-related controversies represented 33 percent of the dataset, followed by regulatory or legal matters at 18 percent, workplace or cultural issues at 15 percent and product or customer harm at 11 percent.

Personal misconduct and financial controversies tended to produce some of the slowest recoveries, while short-lived viral incidents generally faded more quickly.

The research identified four broad trajectories.

Thirty percent of cases experienced a relatively rapid decline in negative visibility. Another 31 percent experienced what the study calls "narrative diversification," in which negative coverage remained visible but became less dominant as newer information appeared.

Twenty-three percent experienced "event substitution," where the original controversy was effectively overtaken by subsequent events.

The remaining 16 percent fell into what the researchers classified as "persistent contamination," where negative coverage continued to dominate the executive's search results.

The research also examined patterns associated with declining negative-search saturation.

The strongest recoveries did not necessarily occur when negative articles disappeared.

Instead, they often occurred as the overall information environment became broader.

Cases involving sustained independent media coverage, new business activity, long-form interviews and stronger executive-owned digital assets generally experienced greater declines in negative search saturation than cases in which little new information appeared.

The study found that executives with stronger portfolios of owned digital assets experienced a 40 percent faster decline in negative-result share.

The combination of owned assets and sustained independent media coverage was associated with the fastest recovery observed in the dataset.

Keever cautions that the study is observational and therefore cannot establish that any individual response strategy caused the improvement.

Executives who remain professionally active after a controversy may generate more new information for reasons unrelated to reputation strategy. The severity of the underlying event, strength of the news sources and public interest can also influence search results.

Still, the patterns suggest that digital reputation recovery may depend less on making old information disappear than on creating enough legitimate, relevant new information to prevent one event from permanently defining a person's search identity.

The study went beyond Google.

Keever's team also conducted 800 evaluations across eight AI search and answer systems, testing how the platforms characterized executives with negative press histories.

The results suggest that generative AI could amplify a problem already present in traditional search.

In 68 percent of the evaluations, negative press was presented as a defining or prominent characteristic of the executive.

Researchers identified material inaccuracies in 28 percent of the responses.

In 55 percent of evaluations, according to the study's coding methodology, allegations were described without adequate attribution indicating that they were allegations rather than established facts.

Only 12 percent omitted the negative coverage entirely.

The distinction between Google and generative AI is significant.

Google generally presents users with multiple results and allows them to evaluate the sources individually.

An AI system may instead synthesize those sources into a single narrative.

For an executive with years of conflicting information online, that means the question is no longer simply "What ranks for my name?"

It is increasingly becoming "What conclusion does a machine reach after reading everything that ranks for my name?"

That transition has implications beyond the reputation-management industry.

Executives increasingly operate as searchable entities connected to companies, investments, lawsuits, interviews, news coverage, social profiles and corporate records.

AI adds another interpreter to that ecosystem.

Keever argues that this makes accuracy, corroboration and authoritative sourcing increasingly important.

A company can control what appears on its own website. It cannot directly control how independent publications describe its leadership or how an AI system reconciles hundreds of external sources.

That means digital reputation is increasingly shaped by an interconnected body of evidence rather than any single webpage.

For Keever, the research supports a shift toward proactive reputation management.

Companies routinely maintain cybersecurity plans, crisis-communications protocols and succession strategies before they are needed. He believes executive digital reputation increasingly deserves similar consideration.

"By the time a CEO has a reputation crisis, Google already has an established understanding of that person," Keever said. "The strength and accuracy of that information environment before the crisis can influence what happens afterward."

The research ultimately points toward a broader change in how corporate reputation may need to be measured.

Traditional reputation analysis frequently focuses on media sentiment, consumer perception and the immediate news cycle.

Search introduces another dimension: persistence.

AI introduces yet another: synthesis.

An executive can therefore recover in the court of public opinion while remaining associated with a controversy in search results. And increasingly, an AI system can resurrect and summarize that controversy for someone who was never aware of it when it occurred.

Keever's analysis suggests that the digital afterlife of corporate crises deserves considerably more study.

The most consequential finding may also be the simplest.

A crisis does not necessarily end when people stop talking about it.

In the age of Google and artificial intelligence, it can end only when the information environment surrounding it changes.