Most people I talk to want more search engine visibility, not less. Still, every once in a while I get a request to remove an unflattering result in Google. Here’s some advice on how to get it done:

The best first step is to remove the reference on the originating Web page. If you don’t, there’s a very good chance that the result will reappear even after you get it removed.

If you are the site owner or the Web master of the site in question, that’s pretty easy. If the site is owned by someone else though it’s a different situation. Hopefully the site owner is an understanding soul and will help you out. However, if the bad result is at TripAdvisor or epinions or another review site, you may just be out of luck. I’ve heard stories of hotel owners that got a bad review pulled from TripAdvisor, but only after they had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the reviewer had mixed up the name of the hotel and meant to slam a different hotel in the area.

Once the offending information has been removed you can wait until Google’s bots return to the page and update their index. Soon enough, that info will disappear from Google’s index and thus the resulting search results for your name or business.

However, if soon enough isn’t soon enough you can speed up the process. Visit Google’s Webpage Removal Request Tool and choose New Removal Request.

You’ll chose one of three choices here to describe your request:

• Information or image that appears in the Google search results.
• Outdated or "dead" link in the Google search results that returns a 404 (not found) or 410 (gone) error.
• Inappropriate webpage or image that appears in our SafeSearch filtered results. What is SafeSearch?

Chances are you want the first option. Select it and hit next. Again you have three choices.

• The site owner has removed this page/image or blocked it from being indexed by using robots.txt or meta tags. Learn more
• The site owner has modified this page so that it no longer contains the information or image that concerns me. Learn more
• I’ve been unable to work with the site owner, but the information appearing in the search results is one of the following:
  • My social security or government ID number
  • My bank account or credit card number
  • An image of my signature
  • Your full name or the name of your business appearing on an adult content site that’s spamming Google’s search results.

Choose the option that best represents your situation, but I’m going to assume we’re talking about the first two options. In that case you enter in the offending URL on the next screen and supposedly Google moves on this faster.

Warning: This will actually remove the URL from Google’s results for 90 days, so it may have unfortunate SEO repercussions, at least in the short run.

How much faster this will get your result out of the Google index is hard to say. When I tried calling Google (650.253.0000) and got to support for removing a URL from Google’s cache, I got similar info to the Web site, except that they actually sent me to the wrong page.

Rich Brooks
Search Engine Invisibility