Have you heard of any white hat methods for influencing Google's auto suggest/auto complete?

[CraigSDM]

We have a client who has a "friend" who says he can get keyword phrases that include their business name to show up in Google's auto suggest when doing a search.  We have not heard much about this and are skeptical to these claims as we know how Google comes up with these suggested keyword phrases.

Wondering if anyone in the community heard much about tactics to influence auto suggest/auto complete and would like to know your opinion about it.

[johnny122]

His friend is probably thinking to "Amazon's Mechanical Turk". You pay people few cents to type what you need in Google.

Does it work? Yes. Is it ethical? I don't think so :). Especially when you pay for "you competitor + scam".

A French manager has been caught for "negative suggest" against a blogger.

Update: found the article about this story http://www.slate.fr/life/82581/sophie-gourion-malhonnete-e-reputation; use Google translate ~~.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Erwan is correct and this is probably how it is being done. Mechanical Turk, you can get almost anything done.

Very grey / black hat area, so walk away.

-Andy

[CraigSDM]

Thank you!

We also thought it sounded unethical and not something we would want to be a part of though it's always good to get the opinion of others.

[KeriMorgret]

It's also against the Terms of Use of Mechanical Turk HITS. https://www.mturk.com/mturk/help?helpPage=policies (I've edited the list to include those most applicable to this situation)

<a name="#restrictions_use_mturk"></a>Are there restrictions or prohibited uses of Amazon Mechanical Turk?

You may not use Amazon Mechanical Turk for illegal or objectionable activities. Here are some examples of prohibited activities:

• spamming
• impermissible advertising or marketing activities

<a name="#violation_examples"></a>What are some specific examples of HITs that violate Amazon Mechanical Turk policies?

• HITs that directly or indirectly promote a site, service, or opinion
• HITs that violate the terms and conditions of an activity or website (for instance asking Workers to vote for something)
• HITs that generate "referred" site visits or click-through traffic
• HITs that ask Workers to take action to manipulate a website's behavior or results

[CraigSDM]

Thanks - you're right. We don't involve ourselves in this type of activity. Now, we just have to convince our client that their "friend" is not doing them any good.

[EGOL]

We have a client who has a "friend" who says he can get keyword phrases that include their business name to show up in Google's auto suggest when doing a search.

There are a number of methods of generating domain or brand queries.  They can often be associated with keywords.  I a couple of sites that get thousands of visitors per month through domain navigational queries, often combined with a keyword.     Here are a couple ideas.

Have something on your site that is absolutely awesome, astounding, better than anyone else.  If you have great photos of seashells, the best damn collection on the web, and word gets around that you are THE PLACE FOR SEASHELLS then lots of people could type "yourdomain.com seashells" into google search.  This isn't easy to pull off, you gotta earn it, you gotta be awesome but it can be done.

Give a printable freebie away with your domain name clearly showing on it as the destination for more great stuff... Let's say you publish a free printable guide to seashells.   You could have "Visit yourdomain.com for seashell information"   on it.  Iff your guide is awesome then lots of people will visit your site by typing in the domain.

If your site has new content daily about subjects that people are highly interested in and dedicated to then people will start using search engines to navigate straight to your site.

I have not done this one but I know of someone who has a contest running all of the time.  A prize is given frequently.  Lots of people go to that site regularly, repeatedly to enter the contest.  Lots of them get to the site by typing "hisdomain.com xxxxx contest" into google.

Bottom line.  Do something that brings people back to your site again and again and again.

This is not for the wannabe who is looking for the easy way to pull traffic into his website.  It is for the person who is full of enthusiasm and panache and not afraid of dedicating himself to hard and persistent work.

Also, these are not ways to influence autocomplete.  Changes in autocomplete are a result of doing the above.