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The person asking the question asked about studies, stats, or measurable impact. Do you have any of these you could share? You might otherwise risk getting thumbs down and appearing to be answering questions just for MozPoints, when you're responding to questions that are several months old and giving fairly general answers when specific details are requested.

Yes, Google DOES recognize your request for branded sitelinks demotion. The only down side is that they unfortunately do not update within a week.  It took us two months of weekly tracking and demotion to finally get the branded sitelinks that we want displayed. In a nutshell, give it a few more weeks and you'll eventually see the requested URL demotions take effect.

I apologize for #3 completely unrelated advice. Ill edit it in regards to your last comment I would say be careful with duplicate content that is available to the google crawlers, blocking them is not recommended any longer and they will choose one version to index as opposed to all version on all sites. You (perhaps) could change the content to include the keywords but be re-written. I am sure this is a huge undertaking, and my experience is with the same content translated, not the same content posted to different CCTLD's. Ive done a really quick search for HP Computers in the UK, USA, and New Zealand. Here are the results: 1. US: http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/prodserv/computers.html 2. UK: http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/home.html 3.  NZ: http://www8.hp.com/nz/en/home.html while the UK and NZ share a very similar result (essentially no content and the same title tag + the country) the USA returns a different result, it brings us right to the product page with lots of content. It appears that they have mastered the art of making very similar content appear fresh to the crawlers while providing a very similar and regional user experience.