How to Remove Harmful Content from Google Search Results .

 

If you have some damaging content , published about you or your business , you can remove it forever from Google search results , cleaning up your reputation and secure your good name . 

 

Webcide.com removes permanently , negative search results from the Internet .

 

Contact us today for a free and confidential consultation .

Discovering your business has a bad search result associated with it, is a business owner's worst nightmare. All of the hard work you’ve put into ensuring your customers are satisfied with your product or service, may be thrown out the window as a result of one review which found it’s way to the top of your branded Search Engine Results Page (aka SERP).

 

If you notice a bad review, slanderous remarks, or other negative content showing up at the top of your branded search results, instinctively you would want it removed. Right?

 

Luckily, there are a handful of techniques and strategies, used primarily by companies in the ORM (Online Reputation Management) industry, to remove unwanted results from Google and make defamatory content vanish.

 

They are two ways to approach this issue:

• Entirely removing the unwanted result or

• Suppressing the unwanted result

 

The need for this might arise when you’ve realized that you have pages that are no longer relevant for various reasons: old products or staff members, tour options you no longer offer, or pages that are simply causing duplicate content on your site.

 

The majority of website owners choose to simply delete the unwanted content. They probably do so because they don’t know any better. The problem with entirely deleting pages from your website is that since you’ve already established the pages on the net, they’re likely to be linked from other pages on your own site as well as external links from other sites (such as social media mentions, bookmarks, shares, or even plain old linkage).

 

When you delete the content, Google (and other crawl bots) immediately identify that page as a missing page, which may harm your SEO efforts and overall rankings.

 

There are three way to overcome this issue:

• remove pages with the Google Remove URLs Tool via your Search Console account

• exclude pages from being crawled using your Robots.txt file (if you’re using Wordpress, Yoast SEO is a wonderful tool for this)

• indicate that the page should not to be indexed using the “noindex meta tag” (this method is not as secure as the two methods above and may be a little tricky if you don’t know your way around coding).

Make sure to clean up after you and never leave a missing page by applying one of the three solutions above.

 

More often than not, a negative search result will appear on a page you don't own. Somebody may post a negative personal experience they had with your product, a bad review on social media, and so on. You know the drill. 

 

Since you don't own those sites, you’ll need help removing the negative content. It's not easy, but in many cases, it can be done. There are two ways to do this:

 

1. Contact the website owner

Simply Reach out and ask them directly (but politely). For example, you can ask a blogger to remove their negative post. If you can explain why they should remove it, or how you can improve their experience with your product or brand, they may reconsider their stance on your company and even turn the bad review into a positive one.

Remember: Bad reviews don’t mean bad business, they create buzz (did anyone say Miley Cyrus?) and when handled right may even help future prospects in their purchase decisions by showing them you care about your customers.

 

2. Contact Google

Google offers several ways for website owners to remove wrong, personal, harmful or outdated content from their search results.

 

For example, publishing sensitive financial or personal information is against Google policies. Anything that can be used to commit fraud is not allowed. Offensive images or videos are also a violation. If you notice negative content that violates any of these policies, contact Google and ask for it to be removed. Bear in mind, the page will still exist, it would be just blocked from appearing in Google search results.

 

If the content you want removed is simply outdated OR the page no longer exists, simply use the Remove outdated content tool. Google is very strict about how to use and not use this tool, so use it only if the result snippet or the cached (stored) result in SERPs is different from the current page.

 

In today’s day and age there are a significant number of companies promising to remove defamatory internet postings. Other companies promise less tangible results such as monitoring your reputation for new reports and managing your online reputation. Many of these offers frequently played on talk radio can sound tempting, but individuals seeking a solution to online and abuse should understand that a certain experience may come with working with a reputation management company.

 

Additionally there is a distinct level of conduct and behavior one can expect when working with a licensed professional, like a lawyer or attorney, who is subject to a professional code and owes certain duties to a client. Lawyers handle an array of legal practices and procedures every day. Rather than selling a product or a bundle of services designed in a corporate boardroom, a lawyer can recommend only those steps, including legal measures, that are likely to resolve your reputation management issue or defamatory content problem.

 

When you work with a licensed attorney, you can rest assured that your interests will be faithfully pursued without interference from other obligations or potential conflicts. This is because the rules of professional conduct, which governs the practice of law and sets forth acceptable conduct for attorneys, have enshrined a strong duty owed to clients in the rules. Furthermore, a lawyer even holds duties towards a prospective client. Any person who consults with a lawyer over the possibility of representation is considered to be a prospective client. Duties owed to a prospective client under the Model ABA Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 1.18 include:

 

• Even if the individual decides not to work with the attorney, the attorney must maintain confidentiality, in most circumstances, over anything he or she learned from the prospective client.

• A lawyer may not represent a prospective client if the prospective client’s interests are adverse to another interest or matter represented or handled by the lawyer.

• If the firm wishes to handle the matter despite the conflict, the prospective client and the current client must give informed consent, reasonable measures to address the conflict are taken, and if the disqualified lawyer is screen from participating.

 

Furthermore the lawyer is also subject to duties protecting current clients and former clients. Lawyers owe a duty to act with reasonable diligence under Model Rule 1.3. Furthermore, you can rest easy about communications and your role in the process. A lawyer is obligated under the rules to “promptly inform the client of any decision or circumstance with respect to which the client’s informed consent, as defined in Rule 1.0(e), is required…” Furthermore, an attorney must keep you reasonably informed about the status of the matter. If you work with an attorney, you can rest assured that your matter will be handled professionally within the framework of a professional code. Many companies offering similar services are not subject to codified professional standards of behavior and conduct that a lawyer must satisfy.