
A brand can live and die on its internet reputation. And Google's search pages form a huge part of a brand's online representation. It's no wonder, then, that savvy PRs have apparently been engineering incidents with the sole purpose of manipulating search and pushing undesirable stories down the ranks.
As these deepfake examples show, on the internet not all is not as it seems. Conspiracy theories about faked incidents range from Taylor Swift to Walt Disney, and all are completely plausible (or totally wild depending on your penchant for conspiracies). So I've taken a deep dive to share my favourites below. Read on for a more in depth explanation of what exactly I'm talking about, and my list of supposedly faked incidents aka SEO conspiracy theories.