- Learn why Google search results have a direct impact on your personal and professional reputation—and how negative or outdated content can hurt opportunities.
- Discover the legitimate ways to remove or hide search results, including Google’s removal tools, contacting website owners, and legal takedown requests.
- Understand when suppression strategies and professional reputation management services are the most effective way to control what appears on the first page of Google.
Whether you’re on a job search, advancing up the corporate ladder, running a multi-million-dollar firm, starting a new venture, or expanding your brand, your online reputation is crucial. When individuals or other companies are looking to learn more about you or your company, Google search results matter. What appears on Google and other search engines can make or break a career opportunity and a brand’s success.
Search rankings matter as well. You want the best of the best about you and/or your company to appear at the top of front-page search results. Unfortunately, erroneous information, negative reviews and comments, outdated content, missteps, or past transgressions take the spotlight in search engine results pages.
Vigilance is necessary to remove harmful information from search results. It also involves a regular updating process, ensuring that your online reputation accurately represents your company’s core values and successes.
There are various solutions and strategies to remove search results from Google. Let’s go over them here.
Google Search Removals Tool
There are various tools available to help you report and remove information from Google Search Console. You can temporarily remove specific content on a site you own from Google search results.
Temporary Content Removal
There are two types of requests for removing content temporarily:
- Temporarily removing the URL will hide it from Google Search results for approximately six months and clear the cached copy of the page.
- “Clear cache URL” clears the cached page and removes the page description snippet from Search results until the page is crawled again.
Outdated Content
The outdated content section in the Console provides information on removal requests made through the public Remove Outdated Content tool. Anyone can use this — not just the site owner to update search results showing information that is no longer present on a page. Outdated information may include a permanent business closure, relocation, or rebranding.
Contacting the Website Owner
If there is harmful information about you or your company on another website, you can contact the site’s owner to request removal of the content. Explaining why the information is harmful, outdated, or erroneous. If the site owner doesn’t comply, you can then consider other options, such as using Google’s removal tools or submitting legal removal requests.
Removing for Legal Reasons
You can submit a legal removal request to Google for content that violates privacy or infringes on copyright laws. For instance, if a page contains copyrighted material without proper licensing, rights holders can notify Google to remove or hide those search results.
Based on Google’s policies, the search engine giant is inclined to remove content that contains sensitive personal information, such as government IDs or financial numbers; hacked content, including private photos or confidential documents; and content that reveals personally identifiable information, such as names, addresses, or contact information.
Personal Information Removal Request
You can use Google’s “Results about you” tool and Personal Information Removal form to request the removal of sensitive information that could be used for malicious purposes or that you no longer want to be publicly available. This includes contact information, financial details, ID numbers, explicit images, and other sensitive data. Here’s how:
- Identify the information: Search for your name on Google and record instances of personal information you want to remove.
- Use “Results about you” tool: This enables you to track and submit removal requests for your personal information appearing in search results.
- Submit a removal request: You can use Google’s Personal Information Removal form. Specify the type of information and provide relevant URLs.
Working with a Reputation Management Company
If you’ve been unsuccessful in getting content removed or this is outside the scope of what you want to undertake, contact an online reputation management company such as ReputationPrime with the experience and know-how on how to improve Google search results, suppress or remove unwanted and negative content, and take control of your online reputation.
A reputation management company will create a plan tailored to your specific needs. Strategies include:
- Creating fresh, new content to push down harmful content and information in Google search results. Content includes a new bio, thought leadership articles, press releases, social media updates, etc.
- Utilizing search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to enhance the visibility of the positive content created.
- Enhancing online profiles and website content to improve visibility in Google search results.
- Utilizing content removal tactics and tools — from contacting the website owner directly to request removal of harmful or false information to using Google Removal’s Tool, pursuing legal take-down requests, and reporting violations of the terms of service on various platforms, such as Reddit.
- Providing ongoing online monitoring and tracking of your personal or business brand to address negative and positive feedback, increase engagement, and enhance your reputation.
With a combination of customized strategies, a reputation management company helps clients control their online narrative and mitigate the impact of negative search results.
