When we identify something negative, we're drawn to it. We are compelled to unwind the mystery and gather knowledge about negative things. In the world of online reputation management, this means that we tend to click on things that are negative. This drives traffic, causing the negative to rise in search results. The higher the negative rises in search results, the more people click - reinforcing the negative. It’s a devilish cycle coupling human behavior with Google to make search results seem more negative than they may need to be.