People say that the internet is written in ink and anything posted over the web remains there forever – whether it is positive or negative. Especially it is hard to remove negative content from Google. Negative content always hurts the reputation of the individual or the business. Nothing hurts more than a bad reputation when you want to grow your business online.
And the internet is an open forum where anyone can go and write anything…good or bad. Because the internet is such a powerful tool, people use it for many things.
People use it for research, entertainment, communication, and so on. People or businesses who have negative feedback on Google are the most affected.
They lose their reputation and business because of the negative content posted by people.
But, negative content from Google can be removed. Though sometimes it takes too long, probably months, but yes it can be removed.
Simple Ways to Remove Negative Content from Google
Below we will discuss the ways through which you can remove negative content from Google.
DMCA Removal
You can file for a copyright removal or DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) removal if your picture or some content that you own appears on the web without your permission.
You can request for the removal of your personal information and other content for which you have copyright via Google’s DMCA form.
For instance, if you want to remove your email, phone number, personal identification number, or any government-issued number, you can request for the removal of that information from any website through this form.
Legal Removal
Google also offers to submit requests for legal removal of the content which violates Google’s Terms & Conditions of usage of its services. Google offers multiple services and has multiple products that users use.
All these products are designed, developed, and managed by different departments and teams. Hence, it requires a specific tool to report about the removal of the content from the place or platform it appears on.
For instance, if the negative content is on Google Drive, then Team managing Google Drive should be reported for the removal of that content.
Google offers a dedicated page that will help you get to the right place to report content that you would like removed from Google’s services under applicable laws. It provides them with complete information to quickly investigate your complaint and resolve it quickly.
But you should be careful while you submit your content removal request to Google. Remember, Google doesn’t remove content submitted in each and every request. They only remove the content which has a strong and valid reason for removal.
You can take the help of an Online Reputation Management Expert if you are not sure about your case preparation and submission of the removal request.
They can help prepare your case in such a way that it helps Google’s team review it quickly and remove the requested negative content.
Cache Cleanup
Most of the people and Online Reputation Management Agencies just work till the removal of the content but they don’t go beyond that.
Everything which is indexed on Google has the caches on the cloudfare, CDN’s, or servers, or time machines, archive directory, etc.
So, people who have the URL of those images or web pages would still be able to see that content by entering that URL in Google URL bar.
Hence, it is important to have it removed from the Cache pages, archive directories, and server backups.
You can request Google to remove those cache images, cache pages, etc., through this link.
Request to the Site Administrator to Remove the Negative Content
You can contact the site administrators to remove the content which is affecting your reputation. Write or call them and politely ask them to take off the content which is bad for your reputation from their website.
Removal of Negative and Abusive Reviews
If someone uses profanity on google my business or Facebook reviews you can report and get it removed within 48 working hours.
Flagging and Reporting
Some sites like Yelp offer flagging or reporting and would remove certain content that is against their guidelines.
Request the Poster to Remove the Negative Content
Some sites allow the poster to remove content. If you know who posted the info, then try to reach out to the poster to settle the issue and ask them to remove the negative comment.
If that does not work you may want to hire an attorney and send them a cease & desist letter.
Take Legal Action
Legal action is one of the most expensive and time-consuming ways for the removal of negative content. But remember, you can never sue the website for posting the content.
Because they are protected by the Communication Decency Act Section 230. This Act basically protects 3rd party sites and forums from liability on what others may post.
You can only sue a site if the site owners themselves have posted something about you negatively.
So, in case you want to go for legal action, then sue the poster. If you win you can get a court’s order for removal of the negative content.
You can present a copy of the order to the site and the search engines. You can hope that they would honor the court orders. Sometimes they don’t!
The sites themselves will often not honor and Google has been known to deny some court-ordered removals.
If you don’t know who posted it, then you need to file a lawsuit with the user name on the website who posted it. Also, show your proof of attempt that you tried to find who posted it.
Once you win the case you can present it to the website administrator and Google to remove the negative content and for the website administrator to take it off their website.
Hire an Online Reputation Management Agency to Remove the Negative Content from Google
If you don’t want to get into the legal trouble you can hire an online reputation management agency. They can help you with negative content removal. They can help you remove the negative content quickly.
Push Down the Negative Content
Finally, if none of the above work for you, you can still try to push down the negative content by building up more positive content such as websites, blog posts, and social media profiles and use the SEO techniques to make them appear on the first few pages of the google search.
This way the negative content goes down and doesn’t appear and clicked by people. Hence, they only see the positive content and posts about you or your brand.
Conclusion
If you want to remove negative content from google first do research to find out who has done the damage.
Then make your strategy whether you want to go legal, hire an online reputation management agency, or handle it yourself.
The best way is to resolve the issue with the poster and ask them to remove it.
We have 10+ years of experience in Online Reputation Management and we have helped many individuals and companies to clean up their bad reputation online and carry a positive image and reputation on the web. If you want to hire us for any of your online reputation management projects, please use the form below to contact us.
