Every goes crazy when they a see link on google search results. Who wouldn’t? Imagine if you are restaurant and see something about you having cockroaches in the food. An individual having a criminal record? Crazy but it happens. Sometimes it’s a lie just out of pure slander. So what do they do they rebuttal the review or worse make a big deal by defending themselves. This makes things much worse. In the this type of situation you should always act calm and poised. Don’t do anything and wait for it to pass by. It always be on the web but we can do something more positive and more long term.

 

When handling online removal of news articles and other online publications from Google and the Internet, it’s important to reach out to an experienced defamation and news article removal attorney to explore your options. Online defamation is like a wildfire, the longer you let it sit and spread, the harder it’s going to be to put out. Setting up a Google Alerts account is an effective (and free) tool for monitoring your online reputation. Enter your name, and several keywords you want to keep a look out for, and be notified anytime your name and the entered words are mentioned together online. The key to defamation removal is proactivity, not reactivity.

 

As an attorney specializing in Internet marketing law and litigation, I frequently receive questions relating to the removal of negative, defamatory and/or infringing material from the Internet. 

 

Typical questions include:

 

• An anonymous person is posting defamatory statements about my company. What can I do to find out who it is and put a stop to it?

• A former employee has a blog that frequently vents about our company. Do we have any legal remedies against him?

• My personal photographs are being used online without my permission. How can I get them removed?

 

As you undoubtedly know, there is a website for pretty much everything.  That includes numerous websites that serve as forums for users to post business reviews and others specifically dedicated to business complaints.  While individuals have strong First Amendment rights to speak out against businesses (and other people), the line often is crossed when those words are intentionally false.

 

When looking to remove newspaper articles from online sources that say negative things about you, there are several things to evaluate before carrying on. These considerations can include answering all or any of the below questions:

 

• How long has the article been online, and is it outdated already?

• Is your personal information in the article (such as financial records, social security information, or data on minors)?

• Is copyrighted material published within the article?

• Who published the article?

• Are there defamatory or derogatory comments in the article?

• Is the article inaccurate or unfair?

 

In many cases, your only option may be to commence litigation.  To the extent that the website, webhost or ISP requires a court order before revealing an anonymous user’s identity or removing anything from the website, your task may become more challenging.  Your likelihood of success in obtaining the subpoena, identifying the perpetrator and having the content removed will depend on several factors, including the jurisdiction that you’re filing the lawsuit in (and the burden that its laws place on you as the plaintiff), the context of the statement(s) at issue and your status (as a public or a private figure). 

 

Depending on the court that you are in, a determination may be made by the judge as to whether you have a valid case – before the court will even consider issuing a subpoena.

 

One important element to consider before commencing a lawsuit is your ability to prove your damages.  In any complex litigation, this may be a daunting task.  Establishing reputational damage in a defamation case will often require a good amount of evidence.  

 

Depending on the laws of your jurisdiction, if you can establish defamation per se, which includes injurious statements about another’s trade, business, or profession, damages are typically presumed.

 

If negative material is posted about you or your business and it is not per se infringing, defamatory or otherwise prohibited, there still may be a way to have it removed from the Internet.

 

Whether someone copies and publishes a photograph that you took, a blog post that you wrote or completely mirrors your webpage and passes it off as their own, you have several legal rights.  One of the most cost-efficient and expeditious options available to you arises under a federal law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the “DMCA”). One of the most effective legal tactics to remove false, disparaging information on the Internet is a court order.

 

Our strategy is simple. First, our team will file a lawsuit, and once the judge rules that the content is defamatory, Hutcherson Law will seek a court order mandating the removal of the defamatory content. Webcide.com will then submit the court order to the websites hosting the offensive material as well as an explanation of why the court order was granted and a request that the content be removed immediately. Google, as well as other search engines, have a history of honoring court orders, but, nevertheless, there are no guarantees that the content will be removed.If your brand is having problems with negative search results you aren't going to like this statistic: 65% of people trust search engines for research. Search engines are trusted more than any other source of information. What people see online about a brand, whether that's a personal brand, company or products and services, is important. Whether it's true or not is less important - people tend to believe it anyway, or at least be soured on the brand enough to move on. 

 

Removing negative reviews

Reviews can be removed if they violate the terms of service for the review sites, but what about non-review content? 

 

Removing search results at the source

The fastest way to change search results is to remove the content upon which the result is based completely from the website in which it exists. That usually means the author must delete it. Google cannot delete information from a website, but once it's been removed, Google will remove the listing from its search results within a few days (usually).

 

Removing search results from Google

If deleting content from a publisher (a blog, news site, video channel, etc.) doesn’t seem feasible, or doesn’t work, the second choice may be to ask Google and Bing to remove something from their indexes. But that doesn’t remove the content from the site itself, it just makes it far more difficult to find.