It is not uncommon to find something unwanted on the search result. It could be an intimate photo, a piece of sensitive information, inaccurate data, or an embarrassing moment that can damage your reputation. The online world is too saturated with content, and there could be plenty of negative articles that will harm your reputation and business. If you want to know how to remove search results from Google, this article will guide you.
Why Do You Want to Remove Search Results?
Some may think that finding a negative article about you in the online world will be like finding a needle in a haystack. Therefore, they may believe that it is not worth their time. However, you will be surprised to know that some will rank high on search engine results. It takes one defamatory content to destroy your credibility. Managing and monitoring your online reputation has become necessary for most businesses. Understand that these types of content can ruin your relationship and family, harm your professional and business reputation, lead to an emotionally taxing and stressful situation, and financial instability.
Penalizing Content
Some marketers may be wondering if they will be penalized for posting articles against the policy of Google, such as keyword stuffing, bad links, and other blackhat methods. Nonetheless, whether your site will be deindexed or not, it has always been the quality content that will help you rank higher on Google. Even if you have done it unintentionally, you might have linked to poor content or a website with a low PR rank. Therefore, you may want to request Google to remove search results. Know that too many bad links will send a message to the Google bots that you are using the Blackhat method, and you could get lower visibility on search results.
Outdated Information
As time passed by, information could change. For instance, an effective SEO strategy ten years ago may not be applicable these days. Maybe you were writing entertainment and pop culture a few years ago, and you have successfully created high-quality articles. However, you decided to shift to the real estate market. However, your prospects will often see celebrity gossips every time they will search for your name. While this may not be damaging, it could still lead to confusion. The information is outdated and no longer beneficial to your new profession. It will not showcase your skills, trade, and the company that you represent. You want your prospects to know what you can offer. Therefore, you may want to ask Google to remove search results.
Misinformation
There are cases when the information is entirely wrong. Situations like this could happen for a variety of reasons. For instance, your business could be listed in an online database system. However, you noticed that they are sharing your wrong business hours. People will start to be disappointed when they can’t reach out to your business during the specified office hours. There are also lots of unverifiable information on the internet today. A local news site may have posted an inaccurate article about you or your business. Consistency and accuracy should be maintained, especially if it is related to your business. Therefore, you will need to know how to remove search results from Google.
Potentially Harmful Content
A sensitive or piece of damaging information on the internet about you would be the worst-case scenario. Someone may have leaked sensitive information about you. There could be harmful news content about your company. While the news may have happened ten years ago, the article will still appear on the search result. The negative report will remain for a long time unless you do something about them. Sometimes it could be defamatory; in this case, you should try to remove search results. It could be a competitor trying to steal your content, or they may have been spreading malicious information about you. Your rival could have started a demolition job and posted negative reviews about your services. You will be surprised to know what some people are willing to do to ace the competition. Removing this content is possible, but you need to do some work.
Ways to Remove Search Results
The fastest method to manage the search result is to remove the content from its source directly. However, that may not always be possible. If that is your case, you may have to reach out to the search engine site and request Google to remove search results.
Reach Out to the Webmaster
It is the quickest way to remove the content on the search result. However, you should remain cautious when using this method. Not a lot of website managers will allow their content to be deleted. Understand that creating well-written content takes a lot of research and time. Nonetheless, there are still instances when they will agree to your request, especially if they find your reason valid. You need to think about whether asking them to delete the content could make the situation worse. For instance, you could ask a legal agency to send a demand letter to the Webmaster. However, the Webmaster could add your note to the original posts, drawing their audience’s attention. If the news happened long ago, adding new information will refresh the content and increase its ranking online. Consider these first before you ask the Webmaster to remove search results.
How to Ask the Webmaster to Remove Search Results
Before you can even ask the website owner, you need to know the owner of the site. You can use DomainTools or WhoIs to identify the site manager. If the domain privacy of the site is not enabled, you will be able to see the name and contact information of the Webmaster. They should also have a Contact Us page.
Contact the Webmaster
The best option to remove search results is to ask the Webmaster politely. If they agree to your request, that should be enough to stop the content from appearing on the search result. It will take a couple of weeks before it will finally be gone on Google or Bing. If you want it to disappear immediately from those search engine platforms, you could use the Removal Tool of Google. First, you need to have an account for Google Search Console. This tool allows you to deindex content that has already been removed from the source.
Removing the Search Phrase
If this is not possible, phrase removal would be your next best option to remove search results. You could ask the Webmaster to remove a particular search phrase from their page. If your company’s name has been mentioned, you can ask them to alter the wordings so your name or your company name will no longer appear on the content. Therefore, when Google spiders crawl the site again, it will no longer find the search phrase. Eventually, the content will be demoted to the last page of the search result.
Adding Tag
There’s a simple way on how you can instruct google robots to ignore the content. By asking the Webmaster to add the NOINDEX tag, your company’s name may still be found in the content. However, it will no longer appear on the search result. The NoIndex tag is your way of telling the robots not to index the content. After a few weeks, it should be organically removed from the result page.
How to Remove Search Results from Google
If it is impossible for you to reach out to the Webmaster, you can directly ask Google to remove search results. There are some circumstances when it is possible.
- Financial Harm and Identity Theft- Google will remove information if they think it poses a threat to your identity and finances. They will remove content if it includes your signature images, credit card information, social security number, or bank account.
- Sexually Explicit Content- Google will delete any sexually explicit content posted online without consent.
- Legalities- Copyrighted content and information can also be a reason to deindex the content.
- The Right to be Forgotten- The Right to be Forgotten is a European law that upholds a person’s privacy. If your government ID or other personal information is found on the page, Google will take it down.
- DMCA- Any content that breaches the DMCA will prompt Google to remove search results. It basically protects the copyright owner.
Suppressing the Search Result
If you can’t request Google to remove search results using the aforementioned method, you can try suppressing the content. Study shows that most people will not go beyond the first page of the search engine result. Therefore, if you managed to push it down to the last page, there’s a slim chance that people will notice the negative article.
In a sense, it is not suppression, but you are promoting positive and high-quality content. To do this successfully, you need to find out the page authority of the harmful content. You will then develop something that has a higher authority than this. Selecting the best content matched with the proper SEO strategy is the best way to push the content down to the end page of the search result.
Removing Reviews to Remove Search Results
We’ve mentioned before how some of your competitors may be using a demolition job to discredit your company. One easy way to do this is by posting harmful and malicious reviews about your business. Luckily, there are times when Google will remove them, especially if it violates their policy. Yelp, one of the biggest sites for review, will also remove reviews if there is a conflict of interest, contains sexually explicit images and words, illegal, off-topic, fake, spam, inappropriate, harassment, or threat. Once Yelp flag these reviews, it will no longer affect your star rating.
Some people may find the entire process a bit intimidating. However, if you have the patience, you may realize that it is not as hard as it appears to be. You can start by conducting a basic audit. Try to type the name of your business and look at the first page of the search result. If you think it is not good, try to follow some of our methods here. If you are still overwhelmed with the process, you can hire a reputation management agency to remove search results from Google.